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LIBRARY 


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! 
| 


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
GIB’Yr OF | 

| Mrs: SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 

| Received October, 1804. 

| ‘Accessions No. 663 Γ᾿. Chass NG a Pw 

| 7 | 


THE 
BAMPTON LECTURES 


FOR M.DCCC.LXVI 


RIVINGTONS 


DONO .. oc ccce cece ce cece cece ce ον... WATERLOO PLAGE 
ΧΟΥ͂Ν we 6's v0 0s cube e's τος νι νδὼν bebe ΧΊΟΝ eee 
Pambrivge «ee. ec σε oe ve ce seceee ce LBINITY STREET 


The Dibinity οἱ 
Our Lord and Sabiowr Jesus Christ; 


KIGHT LECTURES 


PREACHED. BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 


IN THE YEAR 1866, 


- On the foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., 


CANON OF SALISBURY. 


BY HENRY PARRY LIDDON, M.A. 


STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, | 
AND CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY. 


SCRIBNER, WELFORD, AND CO. 


1869 


GT 2. 
ες’ 


σίσθς. 


‘Wenn Christus nicht wahrer Gott ist ; die mahometanische 
Religion eine unstreitige Verbesserung der christlichen war, und 
Mahomet selbst ein ungleich gréssrer und wiirdigerer Mann 
gewesen ist als Christus.’ 

Lessing, Sémmil. Schriften, Bd. 9, p. 291. 


‘Simul quoque cum beatis videamus 
Glorianter vultum Tuum, Christe Deus, 
Gaudium quod est immensum atque probum, 
Secula per infinita seculorum.’ 
Rhythm. Ecel. 


EXTRACT 


FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 


OF THE LATE 
Soh Tee 


REV. JOHN BAMPTON, 


CANON OF SALISBURY. 


“T give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the 
“ Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford 
“ for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands or 
“ Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter 
“ mentioned ; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice- 
“ Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall 
“take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and 
“(after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) 
“that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight 
“ Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the 
“ said University, and to be performed in the manner following : 


“1 direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter 
“ Term, a Lecturer may be yearly chosen by the Heads of Col- 
“ leges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the 
“ Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and 
“two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture 
“‘ Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary’s in Oxford, between 
“the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the 
“ end of the third wéek in Act Term. 


vi Lxtract from Canon Bampion’s Will, ᾿ 


- “ Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture 
“Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following 
“ Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and 
“to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine 
“ authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the 
“ writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice 
“of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and 
“ Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost— 
“ upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in 
“the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed. 

“ Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec- 
“ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after 
“ they are preached ; and one copy shall be given to the Chan- 
“ cellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every 
“ College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and 
“one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the 
“expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of 
“ the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture 
ἐς Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled 
“to the revenue, before they are printed. 

« Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified 
“ to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken 
“the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Uni- 
“ versities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the same person 
“ shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.” 


PREFACE 
TO THE FIRST EDITION. 


PrerHars an apology may be due to the University for the 
delay which has occurred in the appearance of this volume. If 
so, the writer would venture to plead that he undertook the 
duties of the Bampton Lecturer at a very short notice, and, it 
may be, without sufficiently considering what they involved. 
When, however, the accomplished Clergyman whom the Uni- 
versity had chosen to lecture in the year 1866 was obliged by 
a serious illness to seek a release from his engagement, the 
vacant post was offered to the present writer with a kindness 
and generosity which, as he thought, obliged him, although 
entirely unprepared, to accept it and to meet its requirements as 
well as he could. : 

Under such circumstances, the materials which were made 
ready in some haste for use in the pulpit seemed to require 
‘a close revision before publication. In making this revision— 
which has been somewhat seriously interrupted by other duties 
—the writer has not felt at liberty to introduce alterations 
except in the way of phrase and illustration. He has, however, 
availed himself of the customary licence to print at length some 
considerable paragraphs, the sense of which, in order to save 
time, was only summarily given when the lectures were 
delivered. And he has subjoined the Greek text of the more 
important passages of the New Testament to which he has had 
occasion to refer ; as: experience seems to prove that very many 


viii Preface to the First Edition. 

readers do not verify quotations from Holy Scripture for them- 
selves, or at least that they content themselves with examining 
the few which are generally thought to be of most importance. 
Whereas, the force of the argument for our Lord’s Divinity, as 
indeed is the case with other truths of the New Testament, is 
eminently cumulative. Such an argument is to be appreciated, 
not by studying the comparatively few texts which expressly 
assert the doctrine, but that large number of passages which 
indirectly, but most vividly, imply it. 

It is perhaps superfluous to observe that eight lectures can 
deal with little beyond the outskirts of a vast, or to speak more 
accurately, of an exhaustless subject. The present volume 
attempts only to notice, more or less directly, some of those 
assaults upon the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity which have 
been prominent or popular of late years, and which have, 
unhappily, had a certain weight among persons with whom the . 
writer is acquainted. 

Whatever disturbing influence the modern destructive criti- 
cism may have exerted upon the form of the old argument for 
the Divinity of Christ, the main features of that argument 
remain substantially unchanged. The writer will have deep 
reason for thankfulness, if any of those whose inclination or 
duty leads them to pursue the subject, should. be guided by his 
references to the pages of those great theologians whose names, 
whether in our own country or in the wider field of Catholic 
Christendom, are for ever associated with the vindication of this 
most fundamental truth of the Faith. 

In passing the sheets of this work through the press, 
the writer has been more largely indebted than he can well 
say to the invigorating sympathy and varied learning of the 
Rev. W. Bright, Fellow of University College ; while the Index 
is due to the friendly interest of another Fellow of that College, 
the Rev. P. G. Medd. : 

That in so wide and so mysterious a subject all errors have 
been avoided, is much more than the writer dares to hope. 


Preface to the First Edition, ix 


But at least he has not intentionally contravened the clear sense 
of Holy Scripture, or any formal decision whether of the Undi- 
vided Church or of the Church of England. May He to the 
honour of Whose Person this volume is devoted, vouchsafe to 
pardon in it all that is not calculated to promote His truth and 
His glory! And for the rest, ‘quisquis hee legit, ubi pariter 
certus est, pergat mecum ; ubi pariter hesitat, querat mecum ; 
ubi errorem suum cognoscit, redeat ad me; ubi meum, revocet 
me. Ita ingrediamur simul charitatis viam, tendentes ad Eum 
de Quo dictum est, Querite Faciem Ejus semper®.’ 


CHRIST CHURCH, 
Ascension Day, 1867. 


2 S. Ang. de Trin. i. 5. 


PREFACE 


TO THE SECOND EDITION. 


Tue kindly welcome given to this volume, both at home and 
in America, has led to a demand for another edition, which has 
taken the writer somewhat by surprise. He has, however, availed 
himself of the opportunity to make what use he could of the cri- 
ticisms which have come, from whatever quarter, under his notice. 
Some textual errors have been corrected. Some ill-considered 
or misunderstood expressions have been modified. References 
to authorities and sources of information, which were accidentally 
omitted, have been supplied. ΤῸ a few of the notes there has 
been added fresh matter, of an explanatory or justificatory cha- 
racter. The index, too, has been remodelled and enlarged. But 
the book remains, it is needless to say, substantially unchanged. 
And if it is now offered to the public in a somewhat altered 
euise, this has been done in order to meet the views of friends, 
_ who have urged, not perhaps altogether without reason, that ‘in 

the Church of England, books on Divinity are so largely adapted 
to the taste and means of the wealthier classes, as to imply that 
the most interesting of all subjects can possess no attractions for 
the intelligence and heart of persons who enjoy only a moderate 
income.’ 

Of the topics discussed in this book, there is one which has 
invited a larger share of attention than others, both from those 
who share and from those who reject the Faith of the Church. 
It is that central argument for our Saviour’s Deity, which is 
based on His persistent self-assertion, taken in conjunction with 


xii _ Preface to the Second Edition. 


the sublimity of His Human character. The supreme importance 
of this consideration is indeed obvious. Certainly, in the order 
of historical treatment, the inferences which may be deduced 
from Prophecy, and from Christ’s supernatural design to found 
the ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ naturally precede that which arises 
from His language about Himself. But, inthe order of the 
formation of conviction, the latter argument must claim prece- 
dence. It is, in truth, more fundamental. It is the heart of 
the entire subject, from which a vital strength flows into the 
accessory although important topics grouped around it. Apart 
from Our Lord’s personal claims, the language of prophecy would 
have been only a record of unfulfilled anticipations, and the lofty 
Christology of the Apostles only a sample of their misguided 
enthusiasms; whereas the argument which appeals to Christ’s 
claims, taken in conjunction with His character, is independent 
~ of the collateral arguments which in truth it supports. If the 
argument from prophecy could be discredited, by assigning new 
dates to the prophetical books, and by theories of a cultured 
political foresight ; if the faith of the Apostles could be accounted 
for.upon grounds which referred it to their individual peculiar- 
ities of thought and temper; there would still remain the unique 
phenomenon of the sublimest of characters inseparably linked, in 
the Person of Jesus, to the most energetic proclamation of self. 
In this inmost shrine of Christian Truth, there are two courses 
open to the negative criticism. It may endeavour to explain 
away Our Lord’s self-assertion in the interests, as it conceives, ἡ 
of His Human Character. The impossibility of really doing 
this has been insisted upon in these lectures. For Christ’s self- 
assertion is not merely embodied in-statements which would be 
blasphemy in the mouth of a created being; it underlies and 
explains His entire attitude towards His disciples, towards His 
countrymen, towards the human race, towards the religion of 
Israel. Nor is Christ’s self-assertion confined to the records of 
one Evangelist, or to a particular period in His ministry. The 
three first Evangelists bear witness to it, in different terms, yet 


Preface to the Second Edition. xiii 


not less significantly than does St. John; and it belongs as truly, 
though not perhaps so patently, to Our Lord’s first great discourse 
as to His last. From first to last He asserts, He insists upon 
the acceptance of Himself. When this is acknowledged, a man 
must either base such self-assertion on its one sufficient justifica- 
tion, by accepting the Church’s faith in the Deity of Christ ; or 
he must regard it as fatal to the moral beauty of Christ's Human 
character.—Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. 

It is urged by persons whose opinions are entitled to great 
respect that, however valid this argument may be, its religious 
* expediency must be open to serious question. And undoubtédly 
such like arguments cannot at any time be put forward without 
involving those who do so in grave responsibility. Of this the 
writer, as he trusts, has not been unmindful. He has not used a 
dangerous weapon gratuitously, nor, so far as he knows his own 
motives, with any purpose so miserable as that of producing a 
rhetorical effect. 

What, then, are the religious circumstances which appear to 
warrant the employment of such an argument at present ? 

Speaking roughly, men’s minds may be grouped into three 
classes with reference to the vital question which is discussed in 
these lectures. 

1. There are those who, by God’s mercy, have no doubt on 
the subject of Our Lord’s Godhead. To mere dialecticians their 
case may appear to be one of sheer intellectual stagnation. But 
the fact is, that they possess, or at least that they have altogether 
within their reach, a far higher measure of real ‘life’ than is 
even suspected by their critics. They are not seeking truth ; 
they are enjoying it. They are not like Alpine climbers still 
making their way up the mountain side; they have gained the 
summit, and are gazing on the panorama which is spread around 
and beneath them. It is even painful to them to think of ‘ prov- 
ing’ a truth which is now the very life of their souls. In their 
whole spiritual activity, in their prayers, in their regular medita- 
tions, in their study of Holy Scripture, in their habitual thoughts 


xiv Preface to the Second E ἀ νὰν: 


respecting the eternal Future, they take Christ’s Divinity for 
granted ; and it never occurs to them to question a reality from 
which they know themselves to. be ἀμῶμλος ἡ gaining new 
streams of light and warmth and power. 

To such as these, this book may or may not be of service. 
To some Christians, who are filled with joy and peace in be- 
lieving, a review of the grounds of any portion of their faith 
may be even distressing. To others such a process may be 
bracing and helpful. But in any case it should be observed 
that the foot-notes contain passages from unbelieving writers, 
which are necessary to shew that the statements of the text 
are not aimed at imaginary phantoms, but which also are not 
unlikely to shock and distress religious and believing minds very - 
seriously. In such a matter to be forewarned is to be forearmed. 

2. There are others, and, it is to be feared, a larger class than 
is often supposed, who have made up their minds against the 
claims of Divine Revelation altogether. They may admit the 
existence of a Supreme Being, in some shadowy sense, as an In- 
finite Mind, or as a resistless Force. They may deny that there 
is any satisfactory reason for holding that any such Being exists 
‘at all. But whether they are Theists or Atheists, they resent the 
idea of any interference from on high in this human world, and 
accordingly they denounce the supernatural, on ἃ priort grounds. 
The trustworthiness of Scripture as an historical record is to 
their minds sufficiently disproved by the undoubted fact, that its 
claim to credit is staked upon the possibility of certain extra- 
ordinary miracles. When that possibility is denied, Jesus Christ 
must either be pronounced to be a charlatan, or a person of 
whose real words and actions no trustworthy account has been 
transmitted to us. 

Whichever conclusion be accepted by those who belong to 
the class in question, it is plain that this book cannot hope to. 
assist them. For it treats as certain, facts of which they deny 
even the possibility. It must of necessity appear to them to 
be guilty of a continuous petitio principit ; since they dispute its 


Preface to the Second Edition. XV 


fundamental premises. If any such should ever chance to ex- 
amine it, they would probably see in it ‘only another illustration 
of the hopelessness of getting “orthodox” believers even to appre- 
ciate the nature and range of the difficulties which are felt by 
liberal thinkers.’ 

It may be replied that onahng should have been done 
towards meeting those particular ‘difficulties.’ But, in point of 
fact, this would have been to choose another subject for the lec- 
tures of 1866. A few lectures, after all, can only deal with some 
aspects of a great Doctrine; and every treatise on a question 
of Divinity cannot be expected to begin αὖ ovo, and to discuss the 
Existence and the Personality of God. However little may be 
assumed, there will always be persons eager to complain of the 
minimized ‘assumption’ as altogether unjustifiable; because there 
are always persons who deny the most elementary Theistic truth. 
This being the case, the practical question to be determined is 
this:—How much is it advisable to take for granted in a given - 
condition of faith and opinion, with a view to dealing with the 
doubts and difficulties of the largest number? The existence and 
personality of God, and the possibility and reality of the Chris- 
tian Revelation, have been often discussed ; while the truth and 
evidential force of miracles were defended in the year 1865 by a 
Bampton Lecturer of distinguished ability. Under these circum- 
stances, the present writer deliberately assumed a great deal 
which is denied in our day and country by many active minds, 
with a view to meeting the case, as it appeared to him, of a 
much larger number, who would not dispute his premises, but 
who fail to see, or hesitate to acknowledge, the conclusion which 
they really warrant. 

3. For, in truth, the vast majority of our countrymen still 
shrink with sincere dread from anything like an explicit rejec- 
tion of Christianity. Yet no one who hears what goes on 
in daily conversation, and who is moderately conversant with 
the tone of some of the leading organs of public opinion, can 
doubt the existence of a wide-spread unsettlement of religious 


xvi Preface to the Second Edition. 


belief. People have a notion that the present is, in the hack- 
᾿ neyed phrase, ‘a transitional period,’ and that they ought to 
be keeping pace with the general movement. Whither indeed 
they are going, they probably cannot say, and have never very 
seriously asked themselves. Their most definite impression is 
that the age is turning its back on dogmas and creeds, and is 
moving in a negative direction under the banner of ‘ freedom.’ 
They are, indeed, sometimes told by their guides that they are 
hurrying forward to a chaos in which all existing beliefs, even 
the fundamental axioms of morality, will be ultimately submerged. 
Sometimes, too, they are encouraged to look hopefully forward 
beyond the immediate foreground of conflict and confusion, 
to an intellectual and moral Elysium, which will be reached 
when Science has divested Religion of all its superstitious incum- 
brances, and in which ‘thought’ and ‘feeling,’ after their long 
misunderstanding, are to embrace under the supervision of a 
philosophy higher than any which has yet been elaborated. 
But these visions are seen only by a few, and they are not 
easily popularized. The general tendency is to avoid specula- 
tions, whether hopeful or discouraging, about the future, yet to 
acquiesce in the theory so constantly suggested, that there 
is some sort of necessary opposition between dogma and good- 
ness, and to recognise the consequent duty of promoting good- 
ness by the depreciation and destruction of dogma. Thus, the 
movement, although negative in one sense, believes itself to be 
eminently positive in another. With regard to dogma, it is 
negative. But it sincerely affects a particular care for morality ; 
and in purifying and enforcing moral truth, it endeavours to 
make its positive character most distinctly apparent. 

It is easy to understand the bearing of such a habit of mind 
when placed face to face with the Person of Our Lord. It tends 
to issue practically (although, in its earlier stages, not with 
any very intelligent consciousness) in Socinianism. It regards 
the great statements whereby Christ’s Godhead is taught or 
guarded in Scripture and the Creeds, if not with impatience 


4 


a 
ἵ 


Preface to the Second Edition. xvii 


and contempt, at least with real although silent aversion. 
Church formularies appear to it simply in the light of an 
incubus upon true religious thought and feeling; for it is in- 
sensible to the preciousness of the truths which they guard. 
Hence as its aims and action become more and more defined, 
it tends with increasing decision to become Humanitarian. Its 
dislike of the language of Niczea hardens into an explicit denial 
of the truth which that language guards. Yet, if it exults in 
being unorthodox, and therefore is hostile to the Creed ; it 
is ambitious to be pre-eminently moral, and therefore it lays 
especial emphasis upon the beauty and perfection of Christ’s 
Human character. It aspires to analyse, to study, to imitate 
that character in a degree which was, it thinks, impossible 
during those ages of dogma which it professes to have closed. 
Τὸ thus relieves its desire to be still loyal in some sense to Jesus 
Christ, although under new conditions: if it discards ancient 
formularies, it maintains that this rejection takes place only 
and really in the interest of moral truth. 

Now it is to such a general habit of mind that this book as a 
whole, and the argument from Our Lord’s self-assertion in par- 
ticular, ventures to address itself. Believing that the cause of 
dogma is none other than the cause of morality,—that the 
perfect moral character of Jesus Christ is really compatible 
only with the Nicene assertion of His absolute Divinity,—the 
writer has endeavoured to say so. He has not been at pains to 
disguise his earnest conviction, that the hopes and sympathies, 
which have been raised in many sincerely religious minds by the 
so-called Liberal-religious movement of our day, are destined 


_to a rude and bitter disappointment. However long the final 


decision between ‘some faith’ and ‘no faith’ may be deferred, 
it must be made at last. Already advanced rationalistic thought 
agrees with Catholic believers i in “maintaining that Christ 1 is not 


b 


xviii Preface to the Second Edition. 


and to cast out His very Name as evil, in the years to come, 
will be thankful to have recognised the real tendencies of an 
anti-dogmatic teaching which for the moment may have won their 
sympathies. It is of the last importance in religious thinking, 
not less than in religious practice, that the question, Whither am 
I going? should be asked and answered. Such a question is not 
the less important because for the present all is smooth and 
reassuring, combining the reality of religious change with the | 
avoidance of any violent shock to old convictions. It has been 
said that there is a peculiar fascination in the movement of a 
boat which is gliding softly and swiftly down the rapids above 
Niagara. But a man must be strangely constituted to be 
able, under such circumstances, so to abandon himself to the 
sense of present satisfaction as to forget the fate which is 
immediately before him. 

The argument from Christ’s character to His Divinity which 
is here put forward can make no pretence to originality. To 
the present writer, it was suggested in its entirety, some years 
ago, upon a perusal of Mr. F. W. Newman’s ‘Phases of Faith.’ 
The seventh chapter of that remarkable but saddening work 
yielded the analysis which has been expanded in these lectures, 
and which the lecturer had found, on more than one occasion, to 
be serviceable in assisting Socinians to understand the real basis 
of the Church’s faith respecting the dignity of her Head. It 
agrees, moreover, even in detail, with the work of the great 
preacher of the Church of France, to whose earnestness and 

genius the present writer has elsewhere professed himself to 
be, and always must feel, sincerely indebted. 

The real justification of such arguments lies in a fact which 
liberal thinkers will not be slow to recognise ἃ, If the moral 


2 Do we not however find a sanction for this class of arguments in appeals 
such as the following? St.John vii. 42: ‘If God were your Father, ye 
would have loved Me.’ St.John v. 38: ‘And ye have not His Word | 
abiding in you: for, whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not.’ And is not 
this summarized in the apostolical teaching ? 1 St. John ii. 23 : ‘ Whosoever 

-denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.’ Such passages appear to 


Preface to the Second Edition. xix 


sense of man be impaired by the Fall, it is not so entirely dis- 
abled as to be incapable of discerning moral beauty. If it may 
err when it attempts to determine, on purely ἃ priort human . 
grounds, what should be the conduct and dispensations of God 
in dealing with His creatures, it is not therefore likely to be 
in error when it stands face to face with human sincerity, and 
humility, and love. At the feet of the Christ of the Gospels, the 
moral sense may be trusted to protest against an intellectual 
aberration which condemns Him as vain and false and selfish, 
only that it may rob Him of His aureole of Divinity. ‘In the 
seventh chapter of the “Phases of Faith,”’ I quote the words of 
a thoughtful friend, ‘there is the satisfaction of feeling that one 
has reached the very floor of Pandemonium, and that a rebound 
has become almost inevitable. Anything is better than to be 
sinking still, one knows not how deeply, into the abyss.’ 

It may be said that other alternatives have been put for- 
ward, with a view to forcing orthodox members of the Church 
of England into a position analogous to that in which the argu- 
ment of these lectures might place a certain section of Lati- 
tudinarian thinkers. For example, some Roman Catholic and 
some sceptical writers unite in urging that either all orthodox 
Christianity is false, or the exclusive claims of the Church of 
Rome must be admitted to be valid. Every such alternative 
must be considered honestly, and in view of the particular 
evidence which can be produced in its support. But to pro- 
pound the present alternative between Rome and unbelief, is 
practically to forget that the acceptance of the dogmatic prin- 
ciple, or of any principle, does not commit those who accept it 
to its exaggerations or corruptions; and that the promises 
of Our Lord to His people in regard alike to Unity and to 
Holiness, are, in His mysterious providence, permitted to be 


shew, that to press an inference, whether it be moral or doctrinal, from an 
admitted truth, by insisting that the truth itself is virtually rejected if the 
inference be declined, is not accurately described as a trick of modern 
orthodoxy. 

b2 


XX Preface to the Second Edition. 


traversed by the misuse of man’s free-will. In a word, the 
dilemma between Roman Catholicism and infidelity is, as a 
matter of fact, very far from being obviously exhaustive : 
but it is difficult to see that any intermediate position can be 
really made good between the denial of Christ’s Human per- 
fection and the admission that He is a Superhuman Person. 
And when this admission is once fairly made, it leads by easy 
and necessary steps to belief in His true Divinity. 

The great question of our day is, whether Christ our Lord 
is only the author and founder of a religion, of which another 
Being, altogether separate from Him, namely, God, is the ob- 
ject ; or whether Jesus Christ Himself, true God and true Man, 
is, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the Object of Christian 
faith and love as truly as, in history, He was the Founder of 
Christendom. Come what may, the latter belief has been, is, 
and will be to the end, the Faith of His Church. 

May those who are tempted to exchange it for its modern 
rival reflect that the choice before them does not lie between 
a creed with one dogma more, and a creed with one dogma less, 
nor yet between a medizval and a modern rendering of the 
Gospel history. It is really a choice between a phantom and 
a reality ; between the implied falsehood and the eternal truth 
of Christianity ; between the interest which may cling to a dis- 
credited and evanescent memory of the past, and the worship 
of a living, ever-present, and immaculate Redeemer. 


Curist CHURCH, 
Whitsuntide, 1868. 


ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. 


LECTURE I. 


THE QUESTION BEFORE US. 
St. Matt. xvi. 13. 


The Question before us in these Lectures is proposed by 
our Lord Himself, and is a strictly theological one 

Its import 1. as affirming that Christ is the Son of Man 

2, as enquiring what He is besides . 


I. Enduring interest of the question thus raised even for 
non-believers . : ; ° : ‘ 
II. Three answers to it are possible— 


1. The Humanitarian : ς : 3 ὶ 
2. The Arian . ὸ : ᾿ Ὰ Ξ 3. 
3. The Catholic 


Of these the Arian is caevbatankiak 50 ΕἸ prac- 
tically there are only two } 7 : : 
111. The Catholic Answer 
1. jealousy guards the truth of Christ’s ἡ οοὴ 
2. secures its full force to the idea of Godhead 
IV. Position taken in these Lectures stated . : ‘ 
Objections to the necessary discussion— 


a. From the ground of Historical Astheticism 
8. From the ground of ‘Anti-doctrinal’ Morality 
y. From the ground of Subjective Pietism . 


Anticipated course of the argument . : . . 


PAGE 


3 
6 


9 


If 


xxii Analysis of the Lectures. 


LECTURE II. 


ANTICIPATIONS OF CHRIST’S DIVINITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 


Gal. iii. 8. 
PAGE 
Principle of the Organic Unity of Scripture.—Its ‘beanie 
ance in the argument . ὦ . . ᾿ o Σ 


I. Foreshadowings— 


a. Indications in the Old Testament of a Plurality 

of Persons within the One Divine Essence . 48 
8. The Theophanies ; their import . . Ae τα 
y. The Divine ‘Wisdom’ 


1. in the Hebrew Canon ; ΜΡ 
2. in the later Greek Sapiential Books . δὲ 
3. In Philo Judeeus . : ° «62 


Contrast between Philo and the New Todhseneats + 8 
Probable Providential purpose of Philo’s speculations. 70 


II. Predictions and Announcements— 
Hope in a future, a moral necessity for men and nations 72 
Secured to Israel in the doctrine of an expected 
Messiah . » ii Ἣν ° . Σ © 45 
Four stages observable in the Menginath doctrine— 
a. From the Protevangelium tothe death of Moses 78 
B. Age of David and Solomon . ° . - 79 
γ- From Isaiah to Malachi : . . ae 
5. After Malachi. : : = . 7 RRO 
Contrast between the original. doctrine and the se- 


cularized form of it . 3 τ΄. 
Christ was rejected for appealing can the Sihiened 
to the original doctrine ν 1.08 


Conclusion : The foregoing eaumnane Hicteated 


Πα. from the emphatic Monotheism of the Old 
Testament Ἶ 93 
2. from its full description of Christ’s Manhood . 94 


Christ’s appeal to the Old Testament Ἶ EES) 


Analysts of the Lectures. Xxili 


LECTURE 11. 


OUR LORD'S WORK IN THE WORLD A WITNESS TO HIS DIVINITY. 


St. Matt. xiii. 54-56. 


PAGE 
I. Our Lord’s ‘Plan’ (caution as to the use of the ex- 
pression) . : ᾿ ~ 98 
. Its ΘΑ ΥΣΕΩΦΡΝ formation of a ld ade spi- 
ritual society, in the form of a kingdom ‘ ὁ, 80 
It is set forth in His Discourses and Parables . : 100 
Its two leading characteristics— 
a. originality . . . . ᾿ ; + ton 
B. ‘audacity’ . . Σ : ‘ ‘ Pee 4 
II. Success of our Lord’s ‘Plan’— 
1. The verdict of Church history . 118 
2. Objections from losses and difficulties, con- 
sidered . : o δ 
3. Internal empire of Christ over souls A ον ἀπ 
4. External results of His work observable in 
human society ᾿ , . 120 


III. How to account for the success of our Lord’s έ Plan’ one 


1. Not by reference to the growth of other 
Religions : . ¥Q2 
2. Not by the ‘causes ’ assigned by Gibbon. I 35 
3. Not by the hypothesis of a favourable crisis. 136 
which ignores the hostility both ofa.Judaism 137 
and 8. Paganism 139 


But only by the belief in, and truth of Christ’s Divinity 145 


LECTURE ΤΥ. 


OUR LORD’S DIVINITY AS WITNESSED BY HIS CONSCIOUSNESS. 


St. John x, 33. 


The ‘Christ of history’ none other than the ‘Christ of 
dogma’ eats . ς . : ᾿ . 152 


χχὶν Analysts of the Lectures. 


A. The Miracles of the Gospel History— 


Their bearing upon the question of Christ’s Person . 
Christ’s Moral Perfection bound up with their reality 


B. Our Lord’s Self-assertion . ‘ : . ; 
I. First stage of His Teaching chiefly Ethical τῷ . 
marked by a. silence as to any moral defect. . 
8. intense authoritativeness . Seek 
II. Second stage : increasing Self-assertion . ‘ 
which is justified by dogmatic revelations of His 
᾿ Divinity 


a, in His claim of co-equality with the Father 1 


8. in His assertion that He is essentially one 
with the Father ‘ 
y. in His references to His actual Pre- exist- 
ence : 
Ground of Christ’s condemnation by the J ewS . 


III. Christ’s Self-assertion viewed in its bearing upon 
His Human Character : 


His 1. Sincerity é é : ὃ ἢ . 
2. Unselfishness . . a λυ . 
3. Humility . 


all dependent upon the trath of His Divinity 


The argument necessarily assumes the form of a 
great alternative : ‘ . ‘ . 


LECTURE V. 


THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY IN THE WRITINGS 


ST. JOHN. 
1 St. John 1. 1-3. 
St. John’s Gospel ‘ the battle-field’ of the New Testament 


I, Ancient and modern objections to its claims . . 
Witness of the second century ; 
Its distinctive internal features may be explained 
generally by its threefold purpose— 
1. Supplementary . . : . . 
2. Polemical . ‘ . ᾿ : . ὃ 
3. Dogmatic . s . : . . ὦ 


PAGE 


153 
160 


161 


162 
163 
166 


169 


177 
179 


182 


186 
Igo 


102 
104 
195 
195 


203 


OF 


Analysis of the Lectures. XXV 
PAGE 
II. It is a Life of the Eternal Word made flesh. 
Doctrine of the Eternal Word in the Prologue . «: 226 
Manifestation of the Word, as possessing the Divine 
Perfections 
of 1. Life ‘ ‘ . ° ° . 230 
2. Love. ‘ : a Ἢ ey Rea Ὁ ΗΝ ΤΟΣ 
3. Light . ; ; 4 . ΕΗ ΝΕ 
The Word identical. with the anita Son. oi ata 
III. It is in doctrinal and moral unison with— 
1. The Epistles of St.John ‘ ° eo 235 
2. The Apocalypse . ; ὦ . - ς, 348 
IV. Its Christology is in essential unison with that of the 
Synoptists. Observe— 
1. their use of the title ‘Son of God’ ‘ - 246 
2. their account of Christ’s Nativity 247 
3. their report of His Doctrine and Work, and 249 
4. of His eschatological discourses . : 253 
Summary ‘ : : : ; 4 : 254 
Υ. It incurs the objection that a God-Man is ΒΘΝΜΘΡΟΝ, 
cally incredible .. 255 
This objection misapprehends ἮΝ Scriptura τὰ ie 
tholic Doctrine . 256 
Mysteriousness of our eae nature usteative of 
the Incarnation . ν ‘ ‘ é - 264 
VI. St. John’s writings oppose an insurmountable barrier 
to the Theory of a Deification by Enthusiasm . 266 


Significance of St. John’s witness to the mia: of 
Christ : : : . : 


272 


xxvi Analysis of the Lectures. 


LECTURE VI. 


OUR LORD’S DIVINITY AS TAUGHT BY ST. JAMES, ST. PETER, 
AND ST. PAUL. 


Gal. ii. 9. 
PAGE 


St. John’s Christology not an intellectual idiosyncrasy . 277 
The Apostles present One Doctrine under various forms . 278 


I. St. James’s Epistle— Ἶ 


1. presupposes the Christology of St. Paul ae 
2. implies a high Christology by incidental ex- 


pressions ° 2 ° . . . 287 
II. St. Peter— i 
1. leads his hearers up to understand Christ’s 
true dignity, in his Missionary Sermons .. 201 
2. exhibits Christ’s Godhead more pa ἢ: in his: 
Epistles . Z - 204 


III. St. Jude’s Epistle implies. that Christ 3 is God οὖ ger 


IV. St. Paul— 
1. form of his Christology cr with that 
of St.John . : δ 468 


prominent place given by Ἰὼ ἴο the corti 
a. of our Lord’s true Mediating Manhood 303 
8. of the Unity of the Divine Essence . 307 


2. Passages from St. Paul asserting the vane 


of Christ interms . 310 
3. A Divine Christ implied in the Γ δὴ πα ‘eating 
of St. Paul’s Missionary Sermons . Aegis cor 
of St. Paul’s Epistles. ; 328 
4. And in some leading features of that ἘΝ 
ing, as in 
a. his doctrine of Faith > > 71 330 
β. his account of Regeneration: . - 344 


y. his attitude towards the Judaizers . 348 


VY. Contrasts between the Apostles do but enhance the 
force of their common faith in a Divine Christ . 350 


Analysts of the Lectures. ~~ xxxii 


ἤν»: ( 
Sif 
Ϊ we 7 be Wn 
LECTURE VII. ¥ he Oe dw 
Ἂ rt, “, 
Ne », ar 
THE HOMOOUSION, SO ye 
. el a f ζ 
Tit. i. 9. Six: 
} PAGE 
Vitality of doctrines, how tested . . 4 hee 


Doctriné of Christ’s Divinity strengthened by natin. 357 
Objections urged in modern times against the Homoousion 358 


Real justification of the Homoousion— 


I. The ante-Nicene Church adored Christ .- . «980 
Adoration of Jesus Christ 


1. during His earthly Life ὃ 364 
2. by the Church of the Apostles after His 
Ascension : . . 367 
Characteristics of the Adoration of Christ ὦ in the 
Apostolic Age— 
a. It was not combined with any worship 
of creatures . «346 


B. It was really the worship due to God i Bae 
y. It was nevertheless addressed to Christ’s 
Manhood, as being united to His Deity 379 


2. by the post-Apostolic Church, 


in sub-Apostolic Age : ‘ Papa Ὁ 
in later part of Second Century ; . San 
in Third Century . : : ee 
expressed in hymns and doxologies = . 985 
and signally at Holy Communion . : 586 
assailed by Pagan sarcasms . . i 5301 
embodied in last words of martyrs . - 398 
inconsistently retained by Arians . 408 

and even by early Socinians . - 404 


II. The ante-Nicene Church spoke of Christ as Divine 405 
Value of testimony of martyrs . ὃ ‘ - 406 
Similar testimony of theologians : . “ΑἹ 
Their language not mere ‘rhetoric’ . . ἐν 4 ῈἘ} 

Objection from doubtful statements of some ante- 
Nicenes . F : ὃ ; Ἢ ΡΒ 


XXVill Analysis of the Lectures. 


PAGE 

Answer: a. They had not grasped all the intellectual 
bearings of the faith. : 419 

8. They were anxious to put strongly for- 
ward the Unity of God . © 422 


y. The Church’s real mind not doubtful .- 424 
III. The Homoousion 


a. not a development in the sense of an enlarge- 


ment of the faith . ᾿ : « ‘426 
B. necessary I. in the Arian struggle . ‘ © 434 
2. in our own times . . 8 


LECTURE VIII. 
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE DOCTRINE OF OUR LORD’S DIVINITY. 
Rom. viii. 32. 
Theology must be, within limits, ‘inferential’ . . ΓΕ: 
What the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity involves . . 442 
I. Conservative force of the doctrine— 


1. It protects the Idea of God in human thought, 444 
a. which Deism cannot guard . ᾿ . 444 
8. and which Pantheism destroys . « 448 
2. It secures the true dignity of Man . . © 451 


TI. Illuminative force of the doctrine— 
a. It implies Christ’s Infallibility as a Teacher . 455 
Objections from certain texts . ς - 456 
1. St. Luke ii. 52 considered : τὺ 
2. St. Mark xiii. 32 considered . -- 458 


A single limitation of knowledge in Christ’s 
Human Soul apparently indicated . - 459 
admitted by great Fathers . . . 460 


does not involve Agnoetism . . . 462 
nor Nestorianism 463 
is consistent with the practical immensity 
of Christ’s human knowledge . . 464 
is distinct from, and does not imply fal- 
libility, still less actual error . 4647 


Application to our Lord’s sanction of the 
Pentateuch . sate: ; ‘ . 468 


Analysis of the Lectures. 


XX1X 
PAGE 
8. It explains the atoning virtue of Christ’s Death 472 
y. It explains the Ὡς garcia power of the 
Sacraments . 479 
5. It irradiates the meaning of Christ’s kingly 
office . A Ὰ ‘ Σ a » 485 
III. Ethical fruitfulness of the doctrine— 
Objection—that a Divine Christ se aie no standard 
for our imitation ὃ ᾿ . 485 
Answer—1. An approximate imitation of Christ 
secured : ‘ 3 ‘ : é 
a. by the reality of His Manhood 486 
8. by the grace which flows from Him 
as God and Man ‘ 437 
2. Belief in Christ’s Godhead has propa- 
gated virtues, unattainable by pagan- 
ism and naturalism— 
a. Purity es : 4 3 ° 488 
8. Humility . ; Ε : . 491 
Ύ- Charity . > ° 2 ° 494 
Recapitulation ofthe argument. . . 497 
Faith in a Divine Christ, the strength of the Church 
under present dangers . ° ° - 498 
Conclusion . gin Hg aia gie ON yrs νἀ τς as 


499 


LECTURE I. 
THE QUESTION BEFORE US. 


When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, He asked His 
disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And 
they- said, Some say that Thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; 
and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, 
But whom say ye that I am?—Sr. Marv. xvi. 13. 


Tuus did our Lord propose to His first followers the mo- 
mentous question, which for eighteen centuries has riveted the 
eye of thinking and adoring Christendom. The material set- 
ting, if we may so term it, of a great intellectual or moral 
event ever attracts the interest and lives in the memory of 
men; and the Evangelist is careful to note that the question 
of our Lord was asked in the neighbourhood of Czsarea Phi- 
lippi. Jesus Christ had reached the northernmost point of His 
journeyings. He was close to the upper source of the Jordan, 
and at the base of the majestic mountain which forms a natural 
barrier to the Holy Land at its northern extremity. His 
eye rested upon a scenery in the more immediate foreground, 
which from its richness and variety has been compared by 
travellers to the Italian Tivolit. Yet there belonged to this 
spot a higher interest than any which the beauty of merely 
inanimate or irrational nature can furnish; it bore visible 
traces of the hopes, the errors, and the struggles of the human 
soul. Around a grotto which Greek settlers had assigned 
to the worship of the sylvan Pan, a Pagan settlement had 
gradually formed itself. Herod the Great had adorned the 
spot with a temple of white marble, dedicated to his patron 
Augustus ; and more recently, the rising city, enlarged and 
beautified by Philip the tetrarch, had received a new name— 

& Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 397. | 
[ποτ΄ 1 | B | 


a Ι 
x 


wd iad δ 


2 Where the question was raised. 


which combined the memory of the Cesar Tiberius with that 
of the local potentate. It is probable that our Lord at least. 
had the city in view», even if He did not enter it. He was 
standing on the geographical frontier of Judaism and Heathen- 
dom. Paganism was visibly before Him in each of its two 
most typical forms of perpetual and world-wide degradation. 
It was burying its scant but not utterly lost idea of an Eternal 
Power and Divinity® beneath a gross ‘materialistic nature- 
worship ; and it was prostituting the sanctities of the human 
conscience to the lowest purposes of an unholy and tyrannical 
statecraft. And behind and around our Lord was that peculiar 
people, of whom, as concerning the flesh, He came Himself4, 
and to which His first followers belonged.. Israel too was 
there; alone in her memory of a past history such as no 
other race could boast ; alone in her sense of a present de- 
gradation, political and moral, such as no other people could 
feel ; alone in her strong expectation of a Deliverance which 
to men who were ‘aliens from’ her sacred ‘commonwealth’ 
seemed but the most chimerical of delusions. On such a spot 
does Jesus Christ raise the great question which is before 
us in the text, and this, as we may surely believe, not without 
a reference to the several wants and hopes and efforts of man- 
kind thus visibly pictured around Him. How was the human: 
conscience to escape from that political violence and from 
that degrading sensualism which had riveted the yoke of: 
Pagan superstition? How was Israel to learn the true drift 
and purpose of her marvellous past? How was she to be really 
relieved of her burden of social and moral misery? How were 
her high anticipations of a brighter future to be explained 
and justified? And although that ‘middle wall of partition,’ 
which so sharply divided off her inward and outward life from 
that of Gentile humanity, had been built up for such high 
and necessary ends” by her great inspired lawgiver, did not 
such isolation also involve manifest counterbalancing risks 
and loss? was it to be eternal? could it, might it be ‘broken 
down?’ These questions could only be answered by some further 
, Revelation, larger and clearer than that already possessed by 
Israel, and absolutely new to Heathendom. They demanded 
some nearer, fuller, more persuasive self-unveiling than. any 


b Dean Stanley surmises that the rock on which was placed the Temple 
of Augustus may possibly have determined the form of our Lord’s promise 
to St. Peter in St. Matt. xvi. 18. Sinai and Palestine, p. 399. 

¢ Rom. i. 20. | ἃ Ibid. ix. 5. 

| [ LECT. 


i, his 


Religion and Theology. 3 


which the Merciful and Almighty God had as yet vouchsafed 


to His reasonable creatures. May not then the suggestive 
scenery of Czsarea Philippi have been chosen by our Lord, 
as well fitted to witness that solemn enquiry in the full answer 
to which Jew and Gentile were alike to find a rich inheritance 
of light, peace and freedom? Jesus ‘asked His disciples, saying, 
Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?’ 

«Let us pause to mark the significance of the fact that our 
Lord Himself proposes this consideration to His disciples 
and to His Church. 

It has been often maintained of late that the teaching of 
Jesus Christ Himself differs from that of His Apostles and 


of their successors, in that He only taught religion, while 


they have taught dogmatic theology®. 

This statement appears to proceed upon a presumption that 
religion and theology can be separated, not merely in idea 
and for the moment, by some process of definition, but per- 
manently and in the world of fact. What then is religion? 
If you say that religion is essentially thought whereby man 
unites himself to the Eternal and Unchangeable Being‘, it 
is at least plain that the object-matter of such a religious 
activity as this is exactly identical with the object-matter 
of theology. Nay more, it would seem to follow that a re- 
ligious life is simply a life of theological speculation. If you 
make religion to consist in ‘the knowledge of our practical 
duties considered as God’s commandments’, your definition 
irresistibly suggests God in His capacity of universal Legis- 
lator, and it thus carries the earnestly and honestly religious 
man into the heart of theology. If you protest that religion 


e Baur more cautiously says: ‘Wenn wir mit der Lehre Jesu die Lehre 
des Apostels Paulus z enhalten, so fallt sogleich der grosse Unter- 
schied in die Augen, welcher hier stattfindet zwischen einer noch in der 
Form eines aligemeinen Princips ‘sich aussprechenden Lehre, und einem 
schon zur Bestimmtheit des Dogma’s gestalteten Lehrbegriff.’ Vorlesungen 
iiber N. T. Theologie, p. 123. But it would be difficult to shew that the 
‘ Universal Principle’ does not involve and embody a number of definite 
dogmas. Baur would not admit that St. John xiv., xv., xvi. contain words 
really spoken by Jesus Christ: but the Sermon on the Mount itself is 
sufficiently dogmatic. Cf. St. Matt. vi. 4, 6, 14, 26. 30, vii. 21, 22. 

f So Fichte, “quoted by Klee, Dogmatik, c. 2. With this definition those 
of Schelling and Hegel substantially concur. It is unnecessary to remark 
that thought is only one element of true religion. 

& So Kant, ibid. This definition (1) reduces religion to being merely 
an affair of the understanding, and (2) identifies its substance with that 
of morality. 


il B2 


4 Religion and Theology. 


has nothing to do with intellectual skill in projecting defini- 
tions, and that it is at bottom a feeling of tranquil dependence 
upon some higher Power!, you cannot altogether set aside 
the capital question which arises as to the nature of that 
Power upon which religion thus depends. Even if you should 
contend that feeling is the essential element in religion, still 
you cannot seriously maintain that the reality of that to which 
such feeling relates is altogether a matter of indifference’. 
For the adequate satisfaction of this religious feeling lies not 
in itself but in its object; and therefore it is impossible to 
represent religion as indifferent to the absolute truth of that 
object, and in a purely esthetical spirit, concerned only with 
the beauty of the idea before it, even in a case where the 
reflective understanding may have condemned that idea as 
logically false. Religion, to support itself, must rest consciously 
on its object: the intellectual apprehension of that object as 
true is an integral element of religion. In other words, religion 
is practically inseparable from theology. The religious Ma- 
hommedan sees in Allah a being to whose absolute decrees he 
must implicitly resign himself; a theological dogma then is 
the basis of the specific Mahommedan form of religion. A child 
reads in the Sermon on the Mount that our Heavenly Father 
takes care of the sparrows, and of the lilies of the fieldJ, 
and the child prays to Him accordingly. The truth upon 
which the child rests is the dogma of the Divine Providence, 
which encourages trust, and warrants prayer, and lies at the 
root of the child’s religion. In short, religion cannot exist 
without some view of its object, namely, God; but no sooner 
do you introduce any intellectual aspect whatever of God, 
nay, the bare idea that such a Being exists, than you have 
before you not merely a religion, but at least, in some sense, 
a theology. 


h ¢ Abhiangigkeitsgefiihl.? Schleiermacher’s account of religion has been 
widely adopted in our own day and country. But (1) it ignores the active 
side of true religion, (2) it loses sight of man’s freedom no less than of 
God’s, and (3) it may imply nothing better than a passive submission to 
the laws of the Universe, without any belief whatever as to their Author. 

i Dorner gives an account of this extreme theory as maintained by De 
Wette in his Religion und Theologie, 1815. De Wette appears to have 
followed out some hints of Herder’s, while applying Jacobi’s doctrine of 
feeling, as ‘the immediate perception of the Divine,’ and the substitute — 
for the practical reason, to theology. Cf. Dorner, Person Christi, Zw. Th. 
p. 996, sqq- 

i St. Matt. vi. 25-30. : 

k Religion includes in its complete idea the knowledge and the worship 


[ LECT. 


Place of Christ n His own doctrine. 5 


Had our Lord revealed no one truth except the Parental 
character of God, while at the same time He insisted upon 
a certain morality and posture of the soul as proper to man’s 
reception of this revelation, He would have been the Author 
of a theology as well as of a religion. In point of fact, besides 
teaching various truths concerning God, which were unknown 
before, or at most only guessed at, He did that which in a 
merely human teacher of high purpose would have been morally 
intolerable. He drew the eyes of men towards Himself. He 
claimed to be something more than the Founder of a new 
religious spirit, or than the authoritative promulgator of a 
higher truth than men had yet known. He taught true religion 
indeed as no man had yet taught it, but He bent the religious — 
spirit which He had summoned into life to do homage to 
Himself, as being its lawful and adequate Object. He taught 
the highest theology, but He also placed Himself at the very 
centre of His doctrine, and He announced Himself as sharing 
the very throne of that God Whom He so clearly unveiled. 
If He was the organ and author of a new and final revelation, 
He also claimed to be the very substance and material of His 
own message ; His most startling revelation was Himself. 

_ These are statements which will be justified, it is hoped, 
hereafter!; and, if some later portions of our subject are for 
a moment anticipated, it is only that we may note the true and 
extreme significance of our Lord’s question in the text. But 
let us also ask. ourselves what would be the duty of a merely 
human teacher of the highest moral aim, entrusted with a great 
spiritual mission and lesson for the benefit of mankind? The 
example of St. John Baptist is an answer to this enquiry. Such 
a teacher would represent himself as a mere ‘voice’ crying aloud 
in the moral wilderness around him, and anxious, beyond aught 
else, to shroud his own insignificant person beneath the majesty 
of his message. Not to do this would be to proclaim his own 


of God. (8. Aug. de Util. Cred. ο. 12. n. 27.) Cicero gives the limited 
sense which Pagan Rome attached to the word: ‘Qui omnia que ad cultum . 
deorum pertinerent, diligenter retractarent et tanquam relegerent, sunt dicti 
religiosi, ex relegendo.? (De Nat. Deorum, ii. 28.) Lactantius gives the 
Christian form of the idea, whatever may be thought of his etymology: . 
‘Vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo, et religati sumus, unde ipsa religio nomen 
accepit.’ (Inst. Div.iv. 24.) Religion is the bond between God and man’s 
whole nature: in God the heart finds its happiness, the reason its rule 
of truth, the will its freedom. 
1 See Lecture IV. 
1] 


6 Lhe ‘Son of Man.’ 


‘moral degradation ; it would be a public confession that he 
could only regard a great spiritual work for others as furnishing 
an opportunity for adding to his own social capital, or to his 
official reputation. When then Jesus Christ so urgently draws 
the attention of men to His Personal Self, He places us in a 
dilemma. We must either say that He was unworthy of His 
own words in the Sermon on the Mount™, or we must confess 
that He has some right, and is under the pressure of some 
necessity, to do that which would be morally insupportable in a 
merely human teacher. Now if this right and necessity exist, 
it follows that when our Lord bids us to consider His Personal 
rank in the hierarchy of beings, He challenges an answer. 
Remark moreover that in the popular sense of the term the 
answer is not less a theological answer if it be that of the 
Ebionitic heresy than if it be the language of the Nicene Creed. 
The Christology of the Church is in reality an integral part of 
its theology ; and Jesus Christ raises the central question of 
Christian theology when He asks, ‘Whom do men say that I 
the Son of Man am? 

It may be urged that our Lord is inviting attention, not to 
His essential Personality, but to His assumed office as the Jewish 
Messiah ; that He is, in fact, asking for a confession of His 
Messiahship. 

Now observe the exact form of our Lord’s question, as given 
in St. Matthew’s Gospel ; which, as Olshausen has remarked, is 
manifestly here the leading narrative: ‘Whom do men say that 
I the Son of Man am? This question involves an assertion, 
namely, that the Speaker’is the Son of Man. What did He 
mean by that designation? It is important to remember that 
with two exceptions® the title is only applied to our Lord in 
the New Testament by His own lips. It was His self-chosen 
Name: why did He choose it ? | 

First, then, it was in itself, to Jewish ears, a clear assertion of 
Messiahship. In the vision of Daniel ‘One like unto the Son of 
Man° had come with the clouds of heaven,.... and there was 
given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom.’ This kingdom 
succeeded in the prophet’s vision to four inhuman kingdoms, 
correspondent to the four typical beasts ; it was the kingdom of 
a prince, human indeed, and yet from heaven. In consequence 


τὰ Observe the principle involved in St. Matt. vi. r-8. 

2 Acts vii. 56; Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14. 

© Dx 1—ds υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, LXX. Dan. vii. 13, sqq. 
. _ _[ LECT. 


The ‘Son of Man’ | 7 


of this propheey, the ‘Son of Man’ became a popular and 
official title of the Messiah. In the Book of Enoch, which is 
assigned with the highest probability by recent criticism to the 
second century before our era?, this and kindred titles are 
continually applied to Messiah. Our Lord in His prophecy over 
Jerusalem predicted that at the last day ‘they shall see the Son 
of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory 4.’ 
And when standing at the tribunal of Caiaphas He thus addressed 
His judges: ‘I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of 
Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven'.’ In these passages there is absolutely no 
room for doubting either His distinct reference to the vision in 
Daniel, or the claim which the title Son of Man was intended to 
assert. As habitually used by our Lord, it was a constant setting 
forth of His Messianic dignity, in the face of the people of 
Israel 8, 

Why indeed He chose this one, out of the many titles of 
Messiah, is a further question, a brief consideration of which lies 
in the track of the subject before us. 

It would not appear to be sufficient to reply that the title 
Son of Man is the most unpresuming, the least glorious of the 
titles of Messiah, and was adopted by our Lord as such. For if 
such a title claimed, as it did claim, Messiahship, the precise 
etymological force of the word could not neutralize its current 
and recognised value in the estimation of the Jewish people. 
The claim thus advanced was independent of any analysis of the 
exact sense of the title which asserted it. The title derived its 
popular force from the office with which it was associated. To 
adopt the title, however humble might be its strict and intrinsic 
meaning, was to claim the great office to which in the minds 
of men it was indissolubly attached. 


P Cf. Dillmann, Das Buch Enoch, 1853, p. 157. Dillmann places the 
book in the time of John Hyrcanus, s.c. 130-109, Dr. Pusey would 
assign to it a still earlier date. Cf. Daniel the Prophet, p. 390, note 2, and 
391, note 3. a St. Matt. xxiv. 30. r Ibid. xxvi. 64. 

* «Den Namen des υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου gebraucht Jesus Selbst auf eine so 
eigenthiimliche Weise von Sich, dass man nur annehmen kann, Er habe mit 
jenem Namen, wie man auch seine Bedeutung genauer bestimmen mag, irgend 
eine Beziehung auf die Messiasidee ausdriicken wollen.’ Baur; Das Christen- 
thum, p. 37. Cf. also the same author’s Vorlesungen tiber Neutestamentliche 
Theologie, p. 76, sqq. In St. Matt. x. 23, xiii. 37-41, the official force of the 
title is obvious. That it was a simple periphrasis for the personal pronoun, 
without any reference to the office or Person of the Speaker, is inconsistent 
with Acts vii. 56, and St. Matt. xvi. 13. 


1 


8 Lhe ‘Son of Man? 


As it had been addressed to the prophet Ezekielt, the title 
Son of Man seemed to contrast the frail and shortlived life of 
men with the boundless strength and the eternal years of the 
Infinite Gop. And as applied to Himself by Jesus, it doubtless 
expresses a real Humanity, a perfect and penetrating community 
of nature and feeling with the lot of human kind. Thus, when 
our Lord says that authority was given Him to execute judg- 
ment because He is the Son of Man, it is plain that the point 
of the reason lies, not in His being Messiah, but in His being 
Human. He displays a genuine Humanity which could deem 
nothing human strange, and could be touched with a feeling of 
the infirmities of the race which He was to judge%. But the 
title Son of Man means more than this in its application to our 
Lord. It does not merely assert His real incorporation with 
our kind; it exalts Him indefinitely above us all as the repre- 
sentative, the ideal, the pattern Manx. He is, in a special sense, 
the Son of Mankind, the genuine offspring of the race. His is 
the Human Life which does justice to the idea of Humanity. 
All human history tends to Him or radiates from Him. He is 
the point in which humanity finds its unity; as St. Ireneus 
says, He ‘recapitulates’ ity. He closes the earlier history of 
our race ; He inaugurates its future. Nothing local, transient, 
individualizing, national, sectarian, dwarfs the proportions of 
His world-embracing Character ; He rises above the parentage, 
the blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, 
His Human Life ; He is the Archetypal Man in Whose presence 
distinctions of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization, 
degrees of mental culture are as nothing. This sense of the 
title seems to be implied in such passages as that in which 
He contrasts ‘the foxes which have holes, and the birds of the 
air which have nests,’ with ‘the Son of Man Who hath not 
where to lay His Head*’ It is not the official Messiah, as 


t ΣΝ ΤῚΣ ie. ‘mortal.’ (Cf. Gesen. in voc. O7x.) It is so used eighty- 
nine times in Ezekiel. Compare Num. xxiii. 19 ; Job xxv. 6, xxxv. 8. In 
this sense it occurs frequently in the plural. In Ps. viii. 4, 5 and lxxx. 17 
it refers, at least ultimately, to our Lord. 

u St. John v. 27; Heb. iv. 15. 

x *Urbild der Menscheit.? Neander, Das Leben Jesu Christi, p. 130, sqq. 
Mr. Keble draws out the remedial force of the title as ‘ signifying that 
Jesus was the very seed of the woman, the Second Adam promised to undo 
what the first had done.’ Eucharistical Adoration, pp. 31-33. 

y Adv. Her. III. 18. 1. ‘Longam hominum expositionem in Se Ipso 
recapitulavit, in compendio nobis salutem prestans.’ 

z St. Matt. vili. 20; St. Luke ix. 58. 

[ LECT. 


/ 


Real force of our Lord’s question. 9 


such ; but ‘the fairest among the children of men,’ the natural 
Prince and Leader, the very prime and flower of human kind, 
Whose lot is thus harder than that of the lower creatures, and 
in Whose humiliation humanity itself is humbled below the 
level of its natural dignity. | 

As the Son of Man then, our Lord is the Messiah; He is 
a true member of our human race, and He is moreover its 
Pattern and Representative ; since He fulfils and exhausts that 
moral Ideal to which man’s highest and best aspirations have 
ever pointed onward. Of these senses of the term the first 
was the more popular and obvious ; the last would be discerned 
as latent in it by the devout reflection of His servants. For the 
disciples the term Son of Man implied first of all the Messiah- 
ship of their Master, and next, though less prominently, His 
true Humanity. When then our Lord enquires ‘Whom do 
men say that I the Son of Man am?’ He is not merely asking 
whether men admit what the title Son of Man itself imports, 
that is to say, the truth of His Humanity or the truth of His 
Messiahship. The point of His question is ¢iis :—what is He 
besides being the Son of Man? As the Son of Man, He its 
Messiah ; but what is the Personality which sustains the 
Messianic office? As the Son of Man, He is truly Human ; 
but what is the Higher Nature with which this emphatic claim 
to Humanity is in tacit, but manifest contrast? What is He 
in the seat and root of His Being? Is His Manhood a robe 
which He has thrown around a Higher form of pre-existent 
Life, or is it His all? Has He been in existence some thirty 
years at most, or are the august proportions of His Life only 
to be meted out by the days of eternity? ‘Whom say men 
that I the Son of Man am?’ 

The disciples reply, that at that time, in the public opinion 
of Galilee, our Lord was, at the least, a preternatural personage. 
On this point there was, it would seem, a general consent. The 
ery of a petty local envy which had been raised at Nazareth, 
‘Is not this the Carpenter’s Son?’ did not fairly represent the 
matured or prevalent opinion of the people. The people did 
not suppose that Jesus was in truth merely one of themselves, 
only endued with larger powers and with a finer religious 
instinct. “They thought that His Personality reached back 
somehow into the past of their own wonderful history. They 
took Him for a saint of ancient days, who had been re-invested 
with a bodily form. He was the great expected miracle-working 
Elijah ; or He was the disappointed prophet who had followed 
I 


“10 St. Peter's Confession. 


His country to its grave at the Captivity; or He was the 
recently-martyred preacher and ascetic John the Baptist; or 
He was, at any rate, one of the order which for four 
hundred years had been lost to Israel; He was one of the 
Prophets, ἐν ἡ ἷὰ 

Our Lord turns from these public misconceptions to the 
judgment of that little Body which was already the nucleus 
of His future Church : ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ St. Peter 
replies, in the name of the other disciples, ‘Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the Living God.’ In marked contrast to the popular 
hesitation which refused to recognise explicitly the justice of 
the claim so plainly put forward by the assumption of the title 
‘Son of Man,’ the Apostle confesses, ‘Thou art the Christ.’ 
But St. Peter advances a step beyond this confession, and 
replies to the original question of our Lord, when he adds ‘The 
Son of the Living God.’ In the first three Evangelists, as well 
as in St. John, this solemn designation expresses something 
more than a merely theocratic or ethical relationship to God >. 
If St. Peter had meant that Christ was the Son of God: solely 
in virtue of His membership in the old Theocracy, or by reason 
of His consummate moral glory’, the confession would have 


a St. Chrysostom, in loc., calls St. Peter τὸ στόμα τῶν ἀποστόλων, ὃ 
πανταχοῦ θερμός. 
b See Lect. V. p. 246, sqq. 
¢ The title of ‘sons’ is used in the Old Testament to express three 
᾿ relations to God. (1) God has entered into the relation of Father to all 
Israel (Deut. xxxii.6; Isa. lxiii. 16), whence he entitles Israel ‘ My son,’ 
‘My firstborn’ (Exod. iv. 22, 23), when claiming the people from Pharaoh; 
and Ephraim, ‘ My dear son, a pleasant child’ (Jer. xxxi. 20), as an earnest 
of restoration to Divine favour. Thus the title is used as a motive to — 
obedience (Deut. xiv. 1); or in reproach for ingratitude (Ibid. xxxii. 5 ; 
Isa. i. 2, xxx, I, 9; Jer. iil. 14); or especially of such as were God’s sons, 
not in name only, but in truth (Ps. lxxiii. 15 ; Prov. xiv. 26; and perhaps 
Isa. xliii. 6). (2) The title is applied once to judges in the Theocracy 
(Ps. lxxxii. 6), ‘I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the 
Most High.’ Here the title refers to the name Elohim, given to the judges 
as representing God in the Theocracy, and as judging in His Name and by 
His Authority. Accordingly to go to them for judgment is spoken of as 
going to Elohim (Deut. xvii. 9). (3) The exact phrase ‘sons of God’ is, with 
perhaps one exception (Gen. vi. 2), used of superhuman beings, who until 
the Incarnation were more nearly like God than were any of the family 
of men (Job i. 6, ii. 1, xxxviii. 7). The singular, ‘My Son,’ ‘The Son,’ 
is used only in prophecy of-the Messiah (Ps. ii. 7, 12; and Acts xiii. 33 ; 
Heb. i. 5, v. 5), and in what is believed to have been a Divine manifestation, 
very probably of God the Son (Dan. iii. 25). The line of David being the 
line of the Messiah, culminating in the Messiah, as in David’s One perfect 
Son, it was said in a lower sense of each member of that line, a in its 
LECT. 


Modern interest in the subject. II 


involved nothing distinctive with respect to Jesus Christ, 
nothing that was not in a measure true of every good Jew, and 
that may not be truer far of every good Christian. If St. Peter 
had intended only to repeat another and a practically equivalent 
title of the Messiah, he would not have equalled the earlier 
confession of a Nathanael4, or have surpassed the subsequent 
admission of a Caiaphas®. If we are to construe his language 
_ thus, it is altogether impossible to conceive why ‘flesh and 
blood’ could not have ‘revealed’ to him so obvious and trivial 
an inference from his previous knowledge, or why either the 
Apostle or his confession should have been solemnly designated 
as the selected Rock on which the Redeemer would build His 
imperishable Church. 

Leaving however a fuller discussion of the interpretation of 
this particular text, let us note that the question raised at 
Ceesarea Philippi is still the great question before the modern 
world. Whom do men say now that Jesus, the Son of Man, is? 

I. No serious ‘and thoughtful man can treat such a subject 
with ‘indifference. - I merely do you justice, my brethren, when 
I defy you to murmur that we are entering upon a merely 
abstract discussion, which has nothing in common with modern 
human interests, congenial as it may have been to those whom 
some writers have learnt to describe as the professional word- 
warriors of the fourth and fifth centuries. You would not be 
guilty of including the question of our Lord’s Divinity in your 
catalogue of tolerabiles ineptie. There is that in the Form of 
the Son of Man which prevails to command something more 
than attention, even in an age so conspicuous for its boisterous 
self-assertion as our own, and in intellectual atmospheres as far 
as possible removed from the mind of His believing and adoring 
Church. Never since He ascended to His Throne was He the 
object of a more passionate adoration than now; never did He 
encounter the glare of a hatred more intense and more defiant : 
and between these, the poles of a contemplation incessantly di- 
rected upon His Person, there are shades and levels of thought and 
feeling, many and graduated, here detracting from the highest 


full sense only of Messiah, ‘I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to 
Me a Son’ (2 Sam. vii. 14; Heb. i. 5; Ps. Ixxxix. 27). The application 
of the title to colleetive Israel in Hos. xi. 1, is connected by St. Matthew 
(ii. 15) with its deeper force as used of Israel’s One true Heir and Repre- 
sentative. Cf. Mill, Myth. Interp. p. 330. Compare too the mysterious 
intimations of Prov. xxx. 4, Ecclus. li. 10, οὗ ἃ Divine Sonship internal to 
the Being of God. 4 δῦ, John i. 49. © St. Matt. xxvi. 63. 


1) 


12 Christ and modern culture. 


expressions of faith, there shrinking from the most violent 
extremities of blasphemy. A real indifference to the claims 
of Jesus Christ upon the thoughts and hearts of men is scarcely 
less condemned by some of the erroneous tendencies of our age 
than by its characteristic excellences. An age which has a 
genuine leve of historical truth must needs fix its eye on that 
august Personality which is to our European world, in point of 
creative influence, what no other has been or can be. An age 
which is distinguished by a keen esthetic appreciation, if not by 
any very earnest practical culture of'moral beauty, cannot but be 
enthusiastic when it has once caught sight of that incomparable 
Life which is recorded in the Gospels. But also, an anti- 
dogmatic age is nervously anxious to attack dogma in its central 
stronghold, and to force the Human Character and Work of the 
Saviour, though at the cost of whatever violence of critical mani- 
pulation, to detach themselves from the great belief with which 
they are indissolubly associated in the mind of Christendom. 
And an age, so impatient of the supernatural as our own, is 
irritated to the highest possible point of disguised irritability by 
the spectacle of a Life which is supernatural throughout, which 
positively bristles with the supernatural, which begins with 
a supernatural birth, and ends in a supernatural ascent to 
heaven, which is prolific of physical miracle, and of which the 
moral wonders are more startling than the physical. Thus it is 
that the interest of modern physical enquiries into the laws of 
the Cosmos or into the origin of Man is immediately heightened 
when these enquiries are suspected to have a bearing, however 
indirect, upon Christ’s Sacred Person. Thus your study of the 
mental sciences, aye, and of philology, ministers whether it will 
or no to His praise or His dishonour, and your ethical specula- 
tions cannot complete themselves without raising the whole 
question of His Authority. And such is Christ’s place in 
history, that a line of demarcation between its civil and its 
ecclesiastical elements seems to be practically impossible ; your 
ecclesiastical historians are prone to range over the annals of 
the world, while your professors of secular history habitually 
deal with the central problems and interests of theology. 

If Christ could have been ignored, He would have been 
ignored in Protestant Germany, when Christian Faith had been 
eaten out of the heart of that country by the older Rationalism. 
Yet scarcely any German ‘thinker’ of note can be named who 
has not projected what is termed a Christology. The Christ of 
Kant is the Ideal of Moral Perfection, and as such, we are told, 

_ [ LECT. 


᾿ Christ and recent philosophy. 13 


he is to be carefully distinguished from the historical Jesus, 
since of this Ideal alone, and in a transcendental sense, can the 
statements of the orthodox creed be predicated‘. The Christ 
of Jacobi is a Religious Ideal, and worship addressed to the 
historical Jesus is denounced as sheer idolatry, unless beneath 
the recorded manifestation the Ideal itself be discerned and 
honoured. According to Fichte, on the contrary, the real 
interest of philosophy in Jesus is historical and not metaphysical ; 
Jesus first possessed an insight into the absolute unity of the 
being of man with that of God, and in revealing this insight He 
communicated the highest knowledge which man can possess}, 
Of the later Pantheistic philosophers, Schelling proclaims that 
the Christian theology is hopelessly in error, when it teaches. 
that at a particular moment of time God became Incarnate, 
since God is ‘external to’ all time, and the Incarnation of God 
is an eternal fact. But Sclielling contends that the man Christ 
Jesus is the highest point or effort of this eternal incarnation, 
and the beginning of its real manifestation to men : ‘none before 
Him after such a manner has revealed to man the Infinite i,’ 
And the Christ of Hegel is not the actual Incarnation of God in 
Jesus of Nazareth, but the symbol of His inearnation in 
_ humanity at largej. Fundamentally differing, as do these con- 
ceptions, in various ways, from the creed of the Church of 
Christ, they nevertheless represent so many efforts of non- 


f Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. Werke, Bd. x. 
Pp. 73, esp. p. 142. 

5. Schrift von den Gott]. Dingen, p. 62, sqq. 

h Anweisung zum seligen Leben Vorl. 6. Werke, Bd. v. p. 482. 

i Vorlesungen iiber die methode des Akad. Studien. Werke, Bd. v. 
p. 298, sqq. 

1 Rel. Phil. Bd. ii. p. 263. This idea is developed by Strauss. See his 
Glaubenslehre, ii. 209, sqq. ; and Leben Jesu, Auf, 2, Bd. ii. p. 739, sqq. 
‘ Der Schliissel der ganzen Christologie ist, das als Subject der Priadikate, 
welche die Kirche Christo beilegt, statt eines Individuums eine Idee, aber 
eine reale, nicht Kantisch unwirkliche gesetzt wird.... Die Menscheit ist die 
Vereinigung der beiden Naturen, der Menschgewordene Gott... . Durch 
den Glauben an diesen Christus, namentlich an Seinen Tod und seine 
Auferstehung wird der Mensch vor Gott gerecht, d. h., durch die Belebung 
der Idee der Menscheit in sich,’ &c. » Feuerbach has carried this forward into 
pure materialism, and he openly scorns and denounces Christianity : Strauss 
has more recently described Feuerbach as ‘the man who put the dot upon 
the i which we had found,’ and he too insists upon the moral necessity of 
rejecting Christianity ; Lebens und Characterbild Marklins, pp. 124, 125, 
sqq., quoted by Luthardt, Apolog. p. 301. Other disciples of Hegel, such 
as Marheinecke, Rosenkranz, and Géschel, have endeavoured to give to their 
ie teaching a more positive direction. 

I 


14 - Christ and the negative criticism. 


Christian thought to do such homage as is possible to its great 
Object ; they are so many proofs of the interest which Jesus 
Christ necessarily provokes in the modern world, even when it is 
least disposed to own His true supremacy. 

Nor is the direction which this interest has taken of late 
years in the sphere of unbelieving theological criticism less 
noteworthy in its bearings on our present subject. The earlier 
Rationalism concerned itself chiefly with the Apostolical age. 
It was occupied with a perpetual analysis and recombination 
of the various influences which were supposed to have created 
the Catholic Church and the orthodox creed. St. Paul was 
the most prominent person in the long series of hypotheses 
by which Rationalism professed to account for the existence 
of Catholic Christianity. St. Paul was said to be the ‘author’ 
of that idea of a universal religion which was deemed to be 
the most fundamental and creative element in the Christian 
creed: St. Paul’s was the vivid imagination which had thrown 
around the life and death of the Prophet of Nazareth a halo 
of superhuman glory, and had fired an obscure Jewish sect 
with the ambition of founding a spiritual empire able to 
control and embrace the world. St. Paul, in short, was held 
to be the real creator of Christianity; and our Lord was 
thrown into the background, whether from a surviving instinct 
of awe, or on the ground of His being relatively insignificant. 
This studied silence of active critical speculation with respect 
to Jesus Christ, might indeed have been the instinct of reve- 
rence, but it was at least susceptible of a widely different 
interpretation. | 

In our day this equivocal reserve is no longer possible. 
The passion for reality, for fact, which is so characteristic. 
of the thought of recent years, has carried. critical enquiry 
backwards from the consciousness of the Apostle to that on 
which it reposed. The interest of modern criticism centres 
in Him Who is ever most prominently and uninterruptedly 
present to the eye of faith. The popular controversies around 
us tend more and more to merge in the one great question 
respecting our Lord’s Person: that question, it is felt, is 
bound up with the very existence of Christianity. And a 
discussion respecting Christ’s Person obliges us to consider 
the mode of His historical manifestation; so that His Life 
was probably never studied before by those who practically 
or avowedly reject Him so eagerly as it is at this moment. 
For Strauss He may be no more than a leading illustration 

[ LECT. 


- 


Answers to Christ's question, (1) the Ebionitic, 15 


of the applicability of the Hegelian philosophy to purposes 
of historical analysis; for Schenkel He may be a sacred im- 
personation of the anti-hierarchical and democratic temper, 
which aims at revolutionizing Germany. Ewald may see in 
Him the altogether human source of the highest spiritual life 
of humanity; and Renan, the semi-fabulous and somewhat 
immoral hero of an oriental story, fashioned to the taste of 
a modern Parisian public. And what if you yourselves are 
even now eagerly reading an anonymous writer, of far nobler 
aim and finer moral insight than these, who has endeavoured, 
by a brilliant analysis of one side of Christ’s moral action, to 
represent Him as embodying and originating all that is best 
and most hopeful in the spirit of modern philanthropy, but 
who seems not indisposed to substitute for the creed of His 
Church, only the impatient proclamation of His Roman judge. 
Aye, though you salute your Saviour in Pilate’s words, Behold 
the Man! at least you cannot ignore Him; you cannot resist 
the moral and intellectual forces which converge in our day 
with an ever-increasing intensity upon His Sacred Person ; 
you cannot turn a deaf ear to the question which He asks 
of His followers in each generation, and which He never asked 
more solemnly than now: ‘Whom say men that I the Son 
of Man amk ?’ 

11. Now all serious Theists, who believe that God is a 
Personal Being essentially distinct from the work of His hands, 
must make one of three answers, whether in terms or in 
substance, to the question of the text. 

1. The Ebionite of old, and the Socinian now, assert that 
Jesus Christ is merely man, whether (as Faustus Socinus himself 
teaches) supernaturally born of a Virgin], or (as modern 
Rationalists generally maintain) in all respects subject to ordi- 
nary natural laws™, although of such remarkable moral 
eminence, that He may, in the enthusiastic language of ethical 
admiration, be said to be Divine. And when Sabellianism 
would escape from the manifold self-contradictions of Patri- 
passianism ἢ, it too becomes no less Humanitarian in its doctrine 
as to the Person of our Lord, than Ebionitism itself. The 
Monarchianism of Praxeas or of Noetus which denied the 


* On recent ‘Lives’ of our Lord, see Appendix, Note A. 


ἢ Chr. Rel. Brevissima Inst. i. 654: ‘De Christi essentia ita statue ; m τῇ τ 


esse hominem in virginis utero, et sic sine viri ope Divini Spirittis-vi _ 
conceptum.’ PAP aS 
7 Wegscheider, Instit. § 120, sqq. Ὁ Cf. Tertull. adv,Prax. ¢, 2... 


ἂν 


τό (2) Zhe Arian Answer. 


distinct Personality of Christ® while proclaiming His Divinity 
in the highest terms, was practically coincident in its popular 
result with the coarse assertions of Theodotus and Artemon Ρ. 
And in modern days, the phenomenon of practical Humani- 
tarianism, disguised but not proscribed by very vehement pro- 
testations apparently condemning it, is reproduced in the case of 
such well-known writers as Schleiermacher or Ewald. They 
use language at times which seems to do the utmost justice to 
the truth of Christ’s Divinity: they recognise in Him the perfect 
Revelation of God, the true Head and Lord of human kind; but 
they deny the existence of an immanent Trinity in the Godhead ; 
they recognise in God no pre-existent Personal Form as the 
basis of His Self-Manifestation to man; they are really Monar- 
chianists in the sense of Praxeas ; and their keen appreciation of 
the ethical glory of Christ’s Person cannot save them from con- 
sequences with which it is ultimately inconsistent, but which are 
on other grounds logically too inevitable to be permanently 
eludeda. A Christ who is ‘the perfect Revelation of God,’ yet 
who ‘is not personally God, does not really differ from the 
altogether human Christ of Socinus ; and the assertion of the 
Personal Godhead of Christ can only escape from the profane 
absurdities of Patripassianism, when it presupposes the eternal 
and necessary existence in God of a Threefold Personality. 

2. The Arian maintains that our Lord Jesus Christ existed 
before His Incarnation, that by Him, as by an instrument, the 
Supreme God made the worlds, and that, as being the most 
ancient and the highest of created beings, He is to be wor- 
shipped ; that, however, Christ had a beginning of existence 
(ἀρχὴν ὑπάρξεως), that there was a time when He did not exist 
(jv ὅτε οὐκ jv); that He has His subsistence from what once 
was not (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἔχει τὴν ixdoraow"), and cannot therefore 


ο * Hee perversitas, que se existimat meram veritatem possidere, dum 
unicum Deum non alias putat credendum quam si ipsum eundemque et 
Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum dicat. Quasi non sic quoque unus 
sit omnia, dum ex uno omnia, per substantie scilicet unitatem, et nihilominis 
custodiatur οἰκονομίας sacramentum, que unitatem in trinitatem disponit, tres 
dirigens, Patrem et Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum,’ (Ibid.) 

P Euseb. Hist, Eccl. v. 28: ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον γενέσθαι τὸν Σωτῆρα. Tert. de 
Prescr. Her. c. 53. App. ; Theodoret, Her. Fab. lib. ii. init. 

a Cf. Dorner, Pers. Christi, Band ii. p. 153. Schleiermacher, although 
agreeing with Schelling and Hegel in denying an immanent Trinity in the 
Godhead, did not (Dorner earnestly pleads) agree in the Pantheistic basis of 
that denial. P. C. ii. p. 1212. Compare Ewald, Geschichte Christus, p. 447, 
quoted by Dorner. 

τ Socrates, i. 5. 

| LECT. 


(3) Answer of the Catholic Church. 17 


be called God in the sense in which that term is applied by 
Theists to the Supreme Being 3. 

3. In contrast with these two leading forms of heresy stands 
the faith, from the first and at this hour, of the whole Catholic 
Church of Christ: ‘I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of His Father before all 
worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, 
Begotten not made, Being OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH the Father ; 
By Whom all things were made ; Who for us men and for our 
salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the 
Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.’ 

Practically. indeed these three answers may be still further 
reduced to two, the first and the third ; for Arianism, no less than 
Sabellianism, is really a form of the Humanitarian or naturalist 
reply to the question. Arianism does indeed admit the exist- 
ence of a pre-existent being who became incarnate in Jesus, but it 
parts company with the Catholic belief, by asserting that this 
being is himself a creature, and not of the very Substance of the 
Supreme God. Thus Arianism is weighted with the intellectual 
difficulties of a purely supernatural Christology, while yet it 
forfeits all hold upon the Great Truth which to a Catholic 
believer sustains and justifies the remainder of his creed. The 
real question at issue is not merely whether Christ is only a 
man ; it is whether or not He is only a created being. When 
the question is thus stated, Arianism must really take its place 
side by side with the most naked Deism ; while at the same time 
it suggests, by its incarnation of a created Logos, the most dif- 
ficult among the problems which meet a believer in the Hypo- 
static Union of our Lord’s Two Natures. In order to escape 
from this position, it virtually teaches the existence of two Gods, 
each of whom is an object of worship, one of whom has been 
created by the Other; One of whom might, if He willed, anni- 
hilate the other*, Thus in Arianism reason and faith are equally 


8 Cf. further Waterland, Defence of Some Queries, Works (ed. Van- 
Mildert), vol. i. pp. 402, 403. 

¢ Waterland, Works, vol. i. p. 78, note f. Bp. Van-Mildert quotes from 
Mr. Charles Butler’s Historical Account of Confessions of Faith, chap. x. 
sect. 2, a remarkable report of Dr. Clarke’s conference with Dr. Hawarden 
in the presence of Queen Caroline. After Dr. Clarke had stated. his system 
at great length and in very guarded terms, Dr. Hawarden asked his permission 
to put one simple question, and Dr. Clarke assented. ‘Then,’ said Dr. Ha- 
warden, ‘I ask, Can God the Father annihilate the Son and the Holy Ghost? 
Answer me Yes or No.’ Dr. Clarke continued for some time in deep 
thought, and then said, ‘It was a question which he had never considered.’ 


1] σ 


18 The three Answers are practically two. 


disappointed : the largest demands are made upon faith, yet the 
Arian Christ after all is but a fellow-creature; and reason is 
encouraged to assail the mysteries of the Catholic creed in 
behalf of a theory which admits of being reduced to an irrational 
absurdity. Arianism therefore is really at most a resting- 
point for minds which are sinking from the Catholic creed 
downwards to pure Humanitarianism ; or which are feeling their 
way upwards from the depths of Ebionitism, or Socinianism, 
towards the Church. This intermediate, transient, and essen- 
tially unsubstantial character of the Arian position was indeed 
made plain, in theory, by the vigorous analysis to which the 
heresy was subjected on its first appearance by St. Athanasius", 
and again in the last century, when, at its endeavour to make a 
home for itself in the Church of England, in the person of 
Dr. Samuel Clarke, it was crushed out, under God, mainly by 
the genius and energy of the great Waterland. And _ history 
has verified the anticipations of argument. Arianism at this 
day has a very shadowy, if any real, existence ; and the Church 
of Christ, holding in her hands the Creed of Nicza, stands 
face to face with sheer Humanitarianism, more or less disguised, 
according to circumstances, by the thin varnish of an admiration — 
yielded to our Lord on esthetic or ethical grounds. 

III. At the risk of partial repetition, but for the sake of 
clearness, let us here pause to make two observations respecting 
that complete assertion of the Divinity of our Lord for which 
His Church is responsible at the bar of human opinion. 

1. The Catholic doctrine, then, of Christ’s Divinity in no 
degree interferes with or overshadows the complemental truth 
of His perfect Manhood. It is perhaps natural that a greater 
emphasis should be laid upon the higher truth which could 
be. apprehended only by faith than on the lower one which, 
during the years of our Lord’s earthly Life, was patent to 
the senses of men. And Holy Scripture might antecedenitly 
~ be supposed to take for granted the reality of Christ’s Manhood, 
on the .ground of there being no adequate occasion for full, 
precise, and reiterated assertions of so obvious a fact. But 
nothing is more remarkable in Scripture than its provision for 
the moral and intellectual needs of ages far removed from 
those which are traversed by the books included in the Sacred 


On the ‘precarious’ existence of God the Son, according to the Arian 
hypothesis, see Waterland’s Farther Vindication of Christ’s Divinity, ch. iii. 
sect. 19. u See Lect. VII. 

| [ LECT. 


Realty of our Lord’s Humanity. 19 


Canon. In the present instance, by a series of incidental 
although most significant statements, the Gospels guard us 
with nothing less than an exhaustive precaution against the 
fictions of a Docetic or of an Apollinarian Christ. We are 
told that the Eternal Word σὰρξ ἐγένετο *, that He took human 
nature upon Him in its reality and completenessy. The Gospel 
narrative, after the pattern of His own words in the text, 
exhibits Jesus as the Son of Man, while yet it draws us on 
by an irresistible attraction to contemplate that Higher Nature 
which was the seat of His eternal Personality. The superhuman 
character of some most important details of the Gospel history 
does not disturb the broad scope of that history as being 
the record of a Human Life, with Its physical and mental 
affinities to our own daily experience. 

_ The great Subject of the Gospel narratives has a true human 
Body. He is conceived in the womb of a human Mother2. He 
is by her brought forth into the world*; He is fed at her 
breast during infancy>. As an Infant, He is made to undergo 
the painful rite of circumcision’. He is a Babe in swaddling- 
clothes lying in a manger4. He is nursed in the arms of 
the aged Simeon®. His bodily growth is traced up to His 
attaining the age of twelvef, and from that point to manhood 8. 
His presence at the marriage-feast in Cana, at the great 
entertainment in the house of Levi}, and at the table of Simon 
the Phariseek; the supper which He shared at Bethany with 
the friend whom He had raised from the grave!, the Paschal 
festival which He desired so earnestly to eat before He suf- 


x St. John i. 14. Cf. Meyer in loc. for a refutation of Zeller’s attempt 
to limit σὰρξ in this passage to the bodily organism, as exclusive of the 
anima rationalis. 

Υ St. John viii. 40 ; 1 Tim. ii. 5. 

Z συλλήψῃ ἐν γαστρὶ, St. Luke i. 31. πρὸ τοῦ συλληφθῆναι αὐτὸν ἐν 
τῇ κοιλίᾳ, Ibid. ii. 21. εὐρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ Πνεύματος ᾿ΑὙίου, 
St. Matt. i. 18, τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ex Πνεύματός ἐστιν ᾿Αγίου, Ibid. 
i. 20; Isa. vii. 14. 3 

a St. Matt. i. 25; St. Luke ii. 7, 11; Gal. iv. 4: ἐξαπέστειλεν ὃ Θεὸς 
Tov Tidy αὑτοῦ, γενόμενον ex γυναικός. 

Ὁ St. Luke xi. 27: μάστοι obs ἐθήλασας. ¢ Tbid. ii. 21. 

ἃ Thid. ii. 12: Βρέφος ἐσπαργανωμένον, κείμενον ἐν τῇ φάτνῃ. 

€ Ibid. ii. 28: καὶ αὐτὸς ἐδέξατο αὐτὸ εἰς τὰς ἀγκάλας αὑτοῦ. 

f Thid. ii. 40: τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανε. 

& Ibid. ii. 52 : Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτε .... ἡλικίᾳ. 

6 St. John ii. 2. 

i St. Luke. v. 29: δοχὴν μεγάλην 

k St. Luke vii. 36. 1$t. John xii. 2. 
eT: σα 


20 Witness of Scripture to Christ’s Human Body. 


fered™, the bread and fish of which He partook before the 
eyes of His disciples in the early dawn on the shore of the 
Lake of Galilee, even after His Resurrection ®,—are witnesses 
that He came, like one of ourselves, ‘eating and drinking ο,᾽ 
When He is recorded to have taken no food during the forty 
days of the Temptation, this implies the contrast presented 
by His ordinary habit?. Indeed, He seemed to the men of 
His day much more dependent on the physical supports of 
life than the great ascetic who had preceded Him4, He 
knew, by experience, what are the pangs of hunger, after the 
forty days’ fast in the wilderness", and in a lesser degree, 
as may be supposed, when walking into Jerusalem on the 
Monday before His Passion’, The profound spiritual sense 
of His redemptive cry, ‘I thirst,’ uttered while He was hanging 
on the Cross, is not obscured, when its primary literal meaning, 
that while dying He actually endured that weilnigh sharpest 
form of bodily suffering, is explicitly recognisedt. His deep 
sleep on the Sea of Galilee in a little bark which the waves 
threatened momentarily to engulf", and His sitting down at 
the well of Jacob, through great exhaustion produced by a 
long journey on foot from Judzea*, proved that He was subject 
at times to the depression of extreme fatigue. And, not to 
dwell at length upon those particular references to the several 
parts of His bodily frame which occur in Holy Scripture y, 
it is obvious to note that the evangelical account of His 
physical Sufferings, of His Death4%, of His Burial®, and of 
the Wounds in His Hands and Feet and Side after His Resur- 


m St. Luke xxii. 8, 15. 2 St. John xxi. 12, 13. 

© St. Luke vii. 34 : ἐλήλυθεν 6 Ὑἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων. 

P Ibid. iv. 2: οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναι5. 

a Tbid. vii. 34: ἰδοὺ, ἄνθρωπος φάγος καὶ οἰνοπότης. 

τ St. Matt. iv. 2: ὕστερον ἐπείνασε. 

5 Tbid. xxi. 18 : ἐπανάγων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐπείνασε. 

t St. John xix. 28 : διψῶ. 

u St. Matt. viii. 24: αὐτὸς δὲ ἐκάθευδε. 

x St. John iv. 6: 6 οὖν Ἰησοῦς κεκοπιακὼς ἐκ τῆς ὁδοιπορίας ἐκαθέζετο οὕτως 
ἐπὶ τῇ πηγῇ. 

Υ̓ τὴν κεφαλὴν, St. Luke vii. 46; St. Matt. xxvii. 29, 30; St. John xix. 
30; τοὺς πόδας, St. Luke vii. 38 τὰς χεῖρας, St. Luke xxiv. 40; τῷ δακ- 
τύλῳ, St. John viii. 6; τὰ σκέλη, St. John xix. 33; τὰ γόνατα, St. Luke 
XXii. 41 ; Thy πλευρὰν, St. John xix. 34; τὸ σῶμα, St. Luke xxii. 19, &e. 

z St. Luke xxii. 44, &c, xxiii.; St. Matt. xxvi., xxvii.; St. Mark xiv. 32, 
seq., XV. 

2 St. John xix. 39, 40: ἔλαβον οὖν τὸ σῶμα Tod Ἰησοῦ καὶ ἔδησαν αὐτὸ 
ὀθονίοις μετὰ τῶν ἀρωμάτων : cf. ver. 42. 


[ LECT. 


Witness of Scripture to Christ's Human Soul. 21 


rection, are so many emphatic attestations to the fact of 
His true and full participation in the material side of our 
common nature. 

Equally explicit and vivid is the witness which Scripture 
affords to the true Human Soul of our Blessed Lord’. Its 
general movements are not less spontaneous, nor do Its affections 
flow less freely, because no sinful impulse finds a place in It, and 
each pulse of Its moral and mental Life is in conscious harmony 
with, and subjection to, an all-holy Will. Jesus rejoices in spirit 
on hearing of the spread of the kingdom of heaven among the 
simple and the poor4: He beholds the young ruler, and forth- 
with loves hime. He loves Martha and her sister and Lazarus 
with a common, yet, as seems to be implied, with a discriminating 
affection’. His Eye on one occasion betrays a sudden movement 
of deliberate anger at the hardness of heart which could steel 
itself against truth by maintaining a dogged silences. The 
scattered and fainting multitude melts Him to compassion ἢ ; 
He sheds tears of sorrow at the grave of Lazarusi, and at the 
sight of the city which has rejected His Love*. In contem- 
plating His approaching Passion! and the ingratitude of the 
traitor-Apostle™, His Soul is shaken by a vehement agitation 
which He does not conceal from His disciples. In the garden 
of Gethsemane He wills to enter into an agony of amazement 
and dejection. His mental sufferings are so keen and piercing 
that His tender frame gives way beneath the trial, and He sheds 


> St. John xx. 27 5 St. Luke xxiv. 39: ἴδετε τὰς χεῖράς μου καὶ τοὺς 
πόδας μου, ὅτι αὐτὸς ἐγώ εἶμι" ψηλαφήσατέ με καὶ ἴδετε" ὅτι πνεῦμα σάρκα 
καὶ ὀστέα οὐκ ἔχει καθὼς ἐμὲ θεωρεῖτε ἔ ἔχοντα. 

¢ 1 St. Pet. iii. 18: θανατωθεὶς. μὲν σαρκὶ, ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι ἐν ᾧ 
καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν. The τῷ before πνεύματι in 
the Textus Receptus being only an insertion by a copyist, πνεῦμα here means 
our Lord’s Human Soul. No other passage in the New Testament places It 
in more vivid contrast with His Body. 

ἃ St. Luke x. 21: ἤγαλλιάσατο τῷ πνεύματι. 

e St. Mark x. 21: 6 δὲ *Inoots ἐμβλέψας αὐτῷ ἠγάπησεν αὐτόν. 

f St. John xi. 5. 

8 St. Mark iii. 5: περιβλεψάμενος αὐτοὺς μετ᾽ ὀργῆς, συλλυπούμενος ἐπὶ τῇ 
πωρώσει τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν. 

h St. Matt. ix. 36: ἐσπλαγχνίσθη περὶ αὐτῶν. 

i St. John. xi. 33-35: Ἰησοῦς οὖν ὡς εἶδεν αὐτὴν κλαίουσαν καὶ τοὺς συνελθόντας 
αὐτῇ ᾿Ιουδαίους κλαίοντας, ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι, καὶ ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν. ... 
᾿Ἐδάκρυσεν ὃ ᾿Ιησοῦς. 

k St. Luke xix. 41: ᾿Ιδὼν τὴν πόλιν, ἔκλαυσεν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ. 

1 St. John xii. 27: νῦν ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται. 

m ΤΌ 4, xiii. 21: 6 Ἰησοῦς ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι καὶ ἐμαρτύρησε. 


1 


22 kealty of Christ's Manhood not 


His Blood before they nail Him to the Cross". His Human 
Will consciously submits itself to a Higher Will®, and He learns 
obedience by the discipline of painP. He carries His dependence 
still further, He is habitually subject to His parents4; He recog- 
nises the fiscal regulations of a pagan state’; He places Himself 
in the hands of His enemies’; He is crucified through weak- 
nesst. If an Apostle teaches that all the treasures of wisdom 
and knowledge are hidden in Him, an Evangelist records that 
He increases in wisdom as ‘He increases in stature*. Conform- 
ably with these representations, we find Him as Man expressing 
creaturely dependence upon God by prayer. He rises up a 
ereat while before day at Capernaum, and departs into a solitary 
place, that He may pass the hours in uninterrupted devotion Y, 
He offers to Heaven strong crying with tears in Gethsemane? ; 
He intercedes majestically for His whole redeemed Church in 
the Paschal supper-room@; He asks pardon for His Jewish and 
Gentile murderers at the very moment of His Crucifixion»; He 
resigns His departing Spirit into His Father’s Hands 9, 

Thus, as one Apostle teaches, He took a Body of Flesh 4, and 
His whole Humanity both of Soul and Body shared in the sin- 
less infirmities which belong to our common nature®. To deny 
this fundamental truth, ‘that Jesus Christ is come in the Flesh,’ 


= St. Mark xiv. 33: ἤρξατο ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν, καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, 
ς Περίλυπός ἐστιν ἣ ψυχῆ μου ἕως θανάτου. St. Luke xxii. 44: γενόμενος ἐν 
ἀγωνίᾳ ἐκτενέστερον προσηύχετο, ἐγένετο δὲ ὃ ἱδρῶς αὐτοῦ ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵ- 
ματος καταβαίνοντες ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν. Cf. Heb. ν. 7. 

© St. Luke xxii. 42: μὴ τὸ θέλημά μου, ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γενέσθω. 

Ρ Heb. v. 8: ἔμαθεν ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἔπαθε τὴν ὑπακοήν. 

ᾳ St. Luke ii. 51: ἦν ὑποτασσόμενος αὐτοῖς. 

τ St. Matt. xxii. 21. For our Lord’s payment of the Temple tribute, cf. 
Ibid. xvii. 25, 27. 

8 Ibid. xvii. 22; St. John x. 18: οὐδεὶς αἴρει αὐτὴν [sc. τὴν ψυχήν pov] 
am ἐμοῦ, GAN ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν am ἐμαυτοῦ. 

t 2 Cor. xiii. 4: ἐσταυῤώθη ἐξ ἀσθενείας. 

ἃ Col. ii. 3: ἐν ᾧ εἰσι πάντες οἱ θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ THs γνώσεως ἀπόκρυφοι. 

x St. Luke ii. 40: ἐκραταιοῦτο πνεύματι. ver. 52. προέκοπτε σοφίᾳ. See 
Lect. VIII. y St. Mark i. 35. 

z Heb. v. 7: ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, δεήσεις Te καὶ ikernpias.... 
μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς καὶ δακρύων προσενέγκας. 

a St. John xvii. 1: ἐπῆρε τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν, καὶ εἶπε. 

> St. Luke xxiii. 34: πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς" οὐ γὰρ οἴδασι τί ποιοῦσι. That 
this prayer referred to the Jews, as well as the Roman soldiers, is clear from 
Acts iii. 17. ¢ St. Luke xxiii. 46. 

4 Col. i. 22 : σώματι τῆς σαρκός. 

ὁ Heb. ii. ττ: 8 τε γὰρ ἁγιάζων καὶ οἱ ἁγιαζόμενοι ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντες. Ver. 14: 
μετέσχε σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος. Ver. 17: ὥφειλε κατὰ πάντα τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοιω- 
θῆναι. Ibid. iv. 15: πεπειρασμένον δὲ κατὰ πάντα Kad ὁμοιότητα. [ 
: LECT, 


Jforfeted by Its prerogative graces. 23 


is, in the judgment of another Apostle, the mark of the Deceiver, , 
of the Antichrist’. Nor do the prerogatives of our Lord’s 
Manhood destroy Its perfection and reality, although they do 
undoubtedly invest It with a robe of mystery, which Faith must 
acknowledge, but which she cannot hope to penetrate. Christ’s 
Manhood is not unreal because It is impersonal ; because in Him 
the place of any created individuality at the root of thought and 
feeling and will is supplied by the Person of the Eternal Word, 
Who has wrapped around His Being a created Nature through 
which, in its unmutilated perfection, He acts upon humankind 8. 
Christ’s Manhood is not unreal, because It is sinless; because 
the entail of any taint of transmitted sin is in Him cut off by a 
supernatural birth of a Virgin Mother; and because His whole 
life of thought, feeling, will, and action is in unfaltering harmony 
with the law of absolute Truth). Nor is the reality of His 
Manhood impaired by any exceptional beauty whether of out- 
ward form or of mental endowment, such as might become One 
‘fairer than the children of meni,’ and taking precedence οὗ 
them in all things*; since in Him our nature does but resume 
its true and typical excellence as the crowning glory of the 
visible creation of God}, 


ἔτ St. John iv. 2: πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυ- 
θότα, ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστι. 2 δῇ. John 7: πολλοὶ πλάνοι εἰσῆλθον εἰς τὸν κόσμον, 
οἱ μὴ ὁμολογοῦντες ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί" οὗτος ἐστιν ὃ πλάνος 
καὶ 6’ Αντίχριστοϑξ. 

& The ἀνυποστασία of our Lord’s Humanity is a result of the Hypostatic 
Union. To deny it is to assert that there are Two Persons in Christ, or else 
it is to deny that He is more than Man. Compare Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 52. 3, 
who appeals against Nestorius to Heb. ii. 16, οὐ yap δήπου ἀγγέλων éemaAau- 
βάνεται, ἀλλὰ σπέρματος ᾿Αβραὰμ ἐπιλαμβάνεται. At His Incarnation the Eter- 
nal Word took on Him Human Nature, not a Human Personality. Luther 
appears to have denied the Impersonality of our Lord’s Manhood. But see 
Dorner, Person Christi, Bd. ii. p. 540. 

5 The Sinlessness of our Lord’s Manhood is implied in St. Luke i. 35. 
Thus He is dv 6 Πατὴρ ἡγίασε καὶ ἀπέστειλεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον, St. John x. 36; 
and He could challenge His enemies to convict Him of sin, St. John viii. 46. 
In St. Mark x. 18, St Luke xviii. 19, He is not denying that He is good; 
but He insists that none should call Him so who did not believe Him to be | 
God. St. Paul describes Him as τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν, 2 Cor. v. 213; and 
Christ is expressly said to be χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας, Heb. iv. 15; ὅσιος, ἄκακος, 
ἀμίαντος, κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν, Heb. vii. 26; ἀμνὸς ἄμωμος καὶ 
ἄσπιλος, τ St. Ῥοῦ. 1. το ; ὃ ἅγιος καὶ δίκαιος, Actsiii. 14. Still more em- 
phatically we are told that ἁμαρτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστι, 1 St. John iii. 5 ; while 
the same truth is indirectly taught, when St. Paul speaks of our Lord as sent 
ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας, Rom. viii. 3. Mr. F. W. Newman does justice 
to the significance of a Sinless Manhood, although, unhappily, he disbelieves 
in It ; Phases of Faith, p. 141, sqq. i Ps, xlv. 3. 

} Col. i. 18: ἐν πᾶσι πρωτεύων. 1 Psalm viii. 6-8. Cp. Heb. ii. 6-10. 
I ‘ 


24 Witness of the Church to Christ’s true Manhood. 


This reality and perfection of our Lord’s Manhood has been 
not less jealously maintained by the Church than it is clearly 
asserted in the pages of Scripture. From the first the Church 
has taught that Jesus Christ is ‘Perfect. Man, of a reasonable 
Soul and Human Flesh subsisting ™.’ It is sometimes hinted 
that believers in our Saviour’s Godhead must necessarily enter- 
tain some prejudice against those passages of Scripture which 
expressly assert the truth of His Manhood. It is presumed that 
such passages must be regarded by them as so many difficulties to 
be surmounted or evaded by a theory which is supposed to be 
conscious of their hostility to itself. Whereas, in truth, to a 
Catholic instinct, each declaration of Scripture, whatever be its 
apparent bearing, is welcome as being an unveiling of the Mind 
of God, and therefore as certainly reconcileable with other sides 
of truth, whether or no the method of such reconciliation be 
immediately obvious. As a matter of fact, our Lord’s Humanity 
has been insisted upon by the great Church teachers of antiquity 
not less earnestly than His Godhead. They habitually argue 
that it belonged to His essential Truth to be in reality what He 
seemed to be. He seemed to be human; therefore He was 
Human® Yet His Manhood, so they proceed to maintain, 
would have been fictitious, if any one faculty or element of 
human nature had been wanting to It. Therefore His Reason- 
able Soul was as essential as His Bodily Frame® Without a 
Reasonable Soul His Humanity would have been but an animal 
existence P ; and the intellectual side of man’s nature would have 
been unredeemed4. Nor did the Church in her collective ca- 
pacity ever so insist on Christ’s Godhead as to lose sight of the 


m Athanasian Creed. 

2 St. Ireneeus, Adv. Her. v. 1. 2: ef δὲ μὴ ὧν ἄνθρωπος ἐφαίνετο ἄνθρωπος, 
οὔτε ὃ ἣν ἐπ᾿ ἀληθείας, ἔμεινε πνεῦμα Θεοῦ, ἐπεὶ ἀόρατον τὸ πνεῦμα, οὔτε ἀλή- 
θειά τις Hy ἐν αὐτῷ, οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἐκεῖνα ἅπερ ἐφαίνετο. 'Tert. De Carne Christi, 
cap. 5: ‘Si caro cum passionibus ficta, et spiritus ergo cum virtutibus falsus. 
Quid dimidias mendacio Christum? Totus Veritas est. Maluit crede [non] 
nasci quam ex aliqué parte mentiri, et quidem in Semet ipsum, ut carnem 
gestaret sine ossibus duram, sine musculis solidam, sine sanguine cruentam, 
sine tunic& vestitam, sine fame esurientem, sine dentibus edentem, sine 
lingua loquentem, ut phantasma auribus fuit sermo ejus per imaginem vocis.’ 
St.‘Aug. De Div. Qu. 83. qu. 14: ‘Si phantasma fuit corpus Christi, fefellit 
Christus, et si fefellit, Veritas non est. Est autem Veritas Christus. Non 
ergo phantasma fuit Corpus Ejus.’ Docetism struck at the very basis of 
truth, by sanctioning Pyrrhonism. St. Iren. Adv. Her. iv. 33. 

ο St. Aug. Ep. 187, ad Dardan. ἢ. 4: ‘Non est Homo Perfectus, si vel 
anima carni, vel anime ipsi mens humana defuerit.’ Confess. vii. c. 19. 

P St. Aug. De Div. Qu. 83, qu. 80. n. I. Ἵ 

ᾳ St. Cyr. Alex. De Inc. 6. 15. 

) [ LECT. 


7 


Importance of this truth to the life of the Soul. 25 


truth of His Perfect Manhood. Whether by the silent force of 
the belief of her children, or by her representative writers on 
behalf of the faith, or by the formal decisions of her councils, 
she has ever resisted the disposition to sacrifice the confession 
of Christ’s created nature to that of His uncreated Godhead. 
She kept at bay intellectual temptations and impulses which 
might have easily overmastered the mind of a merely human 
society. When Ebionites were abroad, she maintained against 
the Docetz that our Saviour’s body was not fictitious or appari- 
tional. When the mutterings of that Humanitarian movement 
which culminated in the great scandal of Paulus of Samosata 
were distinctly audible, she asserted the truth of our Lord’s 
Human Soul against Beryllus of Bostras. When Arianism had 
not as yet ceased to be formidable, she was not tempted by 
Apollinaris to admit that the Logos in Christ took the place of 
the rational element in man. While Nestorianism was still 
vigorous, she condemned the Monophysite formula which prac- 
tically made Christ an unincarnate God: nor did she rest until 
the Monothelite echo of the more signal error had been silenced 
by her assertion of the reality of His Human Will. 

Nor is the Manhood of our Saviour prized by the Church 
only as a revealed dogma intellectually essential to the formal 
integrity of the Creed. Every believing Christian knows that 
it touches the very heart of his inner life. What becomes of 
the one Mediator between God and man, if the Manhood 
whereby He places Himself in contact with us men is but 
unreal and fictitious? What becomes of His Human Example, 
of His genuine Sympathy, of His agonizing and world- 
redeeming Death, of His plenary representation of our race 
in heaven, of the recreative virtue of His Sacraments, of the 
‘touch of nature’ which makes Him, most holy as He is, in 
very deed kin with us? Allis forthwith uncertain, evanescent, 
unreal. If Christ be not truly Man, the chasm which parted 
earth and heaven has not been bridged over. God, as before 
the Incarnation, is still awful, remote, inaccessible. Tertullian’s 


τ It may suffice to quote the language of the Council of Chalcedon, a.p. 
451: τέλειον Toy αὐτὸν ἐν Θεότητι καὶ τέλειον τὸν αὐτὸν ἐν ἀνθρωπότητι, Θεὸν 
ἀληθῶς καὶ ἄνθρωπον ἀληθῶς, τὸν αὐτὸν ex ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος, ὁμοού- 
σιον τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα καὶ ὁμοούσιον τὸν αὐτὸν ἡμῖν κατὰ τὴν 
ἀνθρωπότητα, κατὰ πάντα ὅμοιον ἡμῖν χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας. Routh. Οραβο. ii. 78. 
When these words were spoken, the cycle of possible controversy on the 
subject was complete. The Monothelite question had virtually been settled 
by anticipation. 

5. Socr. H. E. iii. 7: ἔμψυχον εἶναι τὸν ἐνρανθρωπήσαντα. Syn. Bost. anno 244. 


1] 


26 Fesus Christ ἐς God in no equivocal sense. 


inference is no exaggeration: ‘Cum mendacium deprehenditur 
Christi Caro,... omnia que per Carnem Christi gesta sunt, 
mendacio gesta sunt..... Eversum est totum Dei opust.’ Or, 
as St. Cyril of Jerusalem tersely presses the solemn argument : 
εἰ φάντασμα ἦν ἡ ἐνανθρώπησις, φάντασμα καὶ ἡ σωτῃρίαυῦ, 

2. Let it be observed, on the other hand, that the Nicene 
assertion of our Blessed Lord’s Divinity does not involve any 
tacit mutilation or degradation of the idea conveyed by the 
sacred Name of God. When Jesus Christ is said by His Church 
to be God, that word is used in its natural, its absolute, its 
incommunicable sense. This must be constantly borne in mind, 
if we would escape from equivocations which might again and 
again obscure the true point before us. For Arianism will 
confess Christ’s Divinity, if, when it terms Him God, it may 
really mean that He is only a being of an inferior and created 
nature. Socinianism will confess Christ’s Divinity, if this con- 
fession involves nothing more emphatic than an acknowledge- 
ment of the fact that certain moral features of God’s character 
shone forth from the Human Life of Christ with an absolutely 
unrivalled splendour. Pantheism will confess Christ’s Divinity, 
but then it is a Divinity which He must share with the uni- 
verse. Christ may well be divine, when all is divine, although 
Pantheism too may admit that Christ is divine in a higher 
sense than any other man, because He has more clearly recog- 
nised or exhibited ‘the eternal oneness of the finite and the 
Infinite, of God and humanity.’ The coarsest forms of unbelief 
will confess our Lord’s Divinity, if they may proceed to add, 
by way of explanation, that such language is but the echo of 
an apotheosis, informally decreed to the ‘prophet of Nazareth by 
the fervid but uncritical enthusiasm of His Church. 

No: the Divinity of Jesus Christ is not to be thus emptied ᾿ 
of its most solemn and true significance. It is no mere titular 
distinction, such as the hollow or unthinking flattery of a mul- 
titude might yield to a political chief, or to a distinguished 
philanthropist. Indeed Jesus Christ Himself, by His own 
teaching, had made such an apotheosis of Himself morally 
impossible. He had, as no teacher before Him, raised, ex- 
panded, spiritualized man’s idea of the Life and Nature of the 
Great Creator. Baur has remarked that this higher exhibition 
of the solitary and incommunicable Life of God is nowhere so 
apparent as in that very Gospel the special object of which is to 


t Ady. Mare. iii. 8. u Catech. iv. 9. 
[ LECT. 


Christ 7s not the god of an Apotheosis. 27 


exhibit Christ Himself as the eternal Word made Flesh*. 
Indeed God was too vividly felt to be a living Presence by the 
early Christians, to be transformed by them upon occasion into 
a decoration which might wreathe the brow of any, though it 
were the highest human virtue. In heathendom this was 
naturally otherwise. Yet animal indulgence and intellectual 
scepticism must have killed out the sense of primary truths 
which nature and conscience had originally taught, before 
imperial Rome could feel no difficulty in decreeing temples and 
altars to such samples of our race as were not a few of the men 
who successively filled the throne of the Cesarsy. The Church, 
with her eye upon the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, 
could never have raised Jesus to the full honours of Divinity, 
had He been merely Man. And Christianity from the first has 
proclaimed herself, not the authoress of an apotheosis, but the 
child and the product of an Incarnation. 

She could not have been both. Speaking historically, an 
apotheosis belongs strictly to the Greek world ; while a mimicry 
of the Incarnation is characteristically oriental. Speaking phi- 
losophically, the god of an apotheosis is a creation of human 
thought or of human fancy; the God of an incarnation is 
presupposed as an objectively existing Being, Who manifests 
Himself by it in the sphere of sense. Speaking religiously, 
belief in an apotheosis must be fatal to the primary movements 
of piety towards its object, whenever men are capable of earnest 
and honest reflection ; while it is incontestable that the doctrine 
of an incarnation stimulates piety in a degree precisely pro- 
portioned to the sincerity of the faith which welcomes it. Thus 
the ideas of an apotheosis and an incarnation stand towards 
each other in historical, philosophical, and religious contrast. 
Need I add that religiously, philosophically, and historically, 
Christianity is linked to the one, and is simply incompatible 
with the other? 


x Vorlesungen iiber N. T. Theologie, p. 354. 

y On this subject see Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. viii. 
pt. 2. § 2 (apotheosis). The city of Cyzicus was deprived of its freedom for 
_ being unwilling to worship Augustus (Tac. Ann. iv. 36). Thrasea Pztus was 
held guilty of treason for refusing to believe in the deification of Poppza 
(Tac. Ann. xvi. 22). Caligula insisted on being worshipped as a god during 
his lifetime (Suetonius, Caius, xxi. 22). On the number of cattle sacrificed 
to Domitian, see Pliny, Panegyr. xi. The worship of Antinous, who had 
lived on terms of criminal intercourse with Hadrian, was earnestly promoted 
by that Emperor. Dédllinger reckons fifty-three apotheoses between that of 
Cesar and that of Diocletian, fifteen of which were those of ladies belonging 
to the imperial family. 2 1 Tim. i. 17. 


1] 


28 Chvish és not Cee 


No: the Divinity of Jesus is not such divinity as Pantheism 
might ascribe to Him. In the belief of the Church Jesus 
stands alone among the sons of men as He of Whom it can 
be said without impiety, that He is not merely divine, but 
God. Such a restriction in favour of a Single Personality, 
contradicts the very vital principle of Pantheistic thought. 
Schelling appropriately contends that the Indians with their 
many incarnations shew more intelligence respecting the real 
relations of God and the world than is implied by the doctrine 
of a solitary incarnation, as taught in the Creed of Christendom. 
Upon Pantheistic grounds, this is perfectly reasonable; although 
it might -be added that any limited number of incarnations, 
however considerable, would only approximate to the real 
demands of the theory which teaches that God is incarnate 
in everything. But then, such divinity as Pantheism can 
ascribe to Christ is, in point of fact, no divinity at all. When 
God is nature, and nature is God, everything indeed is divine, 
but also nothing is Divine; and Christ shares this phantom- 
divinity with the universe, nay with the agencies of moral 
evil itself. In truth, our God does not exist in the appre- 
hension of Pantheistic thinkers; since, when such truths as 
creation and personality are denied, the very idea of God is 
fundamentally sapped, and although the prevailing belief of 
mankind may still be humoured by a discreet retention of | 
its conventional language, the broad practical result is in reality 
neither more nor less than Atheism. 

You may indeed remind me of an ingenious distinction, 
by which it is suggested that the idea of God is not thus 
sacrificed in Pantheistic systems, and on the ground that 
although God and the universe are substantially identical, 
they are not logically so. Logically speaking, then, you pro- 
ceed to distinguish between God and the universe. You look 
out upon the universe, and you arrive at the idea of God by 
a double process, by a process of abstraction, and by a process 
of synthesis. In the visible world you come into sensible 
contact with the finite, the contingent, the relative, the im- 
perfect, the individual. Then, by a necessary operation of your 
reason, you disengage from these ideas their correlatives; you 
ascend to a contemplation of infinity, of necessity, of the 
absolute, the perfect, the universal. Here abstraction has done | 
its work, and synthesis begins. By synthesis you combine 
the general ideas which have been previously reached through 
abstraction. ‘These general ideas are made to converge in your 

3 | LECT. 


the sense of Panthetsm. ag 


brain under the presidency of one central and unifying idea, 
which you call God. You are careful to insist that this god 
is not a real but an ideal being; indeed it appears that he 
is so ideal, that he would cease to be god if he could be supposed 
to become real. God, you say, is the ‘Idea’ of the universe ; 
the universe is the ‘realization’ of God. The god who is 
enthroned in your thought must have abandoned all contact 
with reality; let him re-enter but for a moment upon the 
domain of reality, and, such are the exigencies of your doctrine, 
that he must forthwith be compelled to abdicate his throne ἃ, 
But meanwhile, as you contend, he is logically distinct from 
the universe; and you repel with some warmth the orthodox 
allegation, that to identify him substantially with the universe, 
amounts to a practical denial of his existence. 

Yet after all, let us ask what is really gained by thus 
distinguishing between a logical and a substantial identity ? 
What is this god, who is to be thus rescued from the 
religious ruins which mark the track of Pantheistic thought ? 
_Is he, by the terms of your own distinction, anything more 
than an ‘Idea ;’ and must he not vary in point of perfection 
with the accuracy and exhaustiveness of those processes of 
abstraction and synthesis by which you undertake to construct 
him? And if this be so, is it worth our while to discuss 
the question whether or not so precarious an ‘Idea’ was or 
was not incarnate in Jesus Christ? Upon the terms of the 
theory, would not an incarnation of God be fatal to His 
‘logical,’ that is to His only admitted mode of existence? 
or would such divinity, if we could ascribe it to Jesus Christ, 
be anything higher than the fleeting and more or less imperfect 
speculation of a finite brain ? 

Certainly Pantheism would never have attained to so strong 
a position as that which it actually holds in European as well 
as in Asiatic thought, unless it had embodied a great element 
of truth, which is too often ignored by some arid Theistic 
systems. To that element of truth we Christians do justice, 
when we confess the Omnipresence and Incomprehensibility 
of God; and still more, when we trace the gracious con- 
sequences of His actual Incarnation in Jesus Christ. But we 
Christians know also that the Great Creator is essentially 
distinct from the work of His Hands, and that He is What 


5. Cf. M. Caro’s notice of Vacherot’s La Métaphysique et la Science, 
Idée de Dieu, p. 265, 544. ; especially p. 289, 544. 


1) 


30 Christ ἐς not merely divine 


He is, in utter independence of the feeble thought whereby 
He enables us to apprehend His Existence. We know -that 
all which is not Himself, is upheld in being from moment 
to moment by the fiat of His Almighty Will. We know that 
His Existence is, strictly and in the highest sense, Personal. 
Could we deny these truths, it would be as easy to confess the 
Divinity of Christ, as it would be impossible to deny the 
divinity of any created being. If we are asked to believe 
in an impersonal God, who has no real existence apart from 
creation or from created thought, in order that we may expe- 
rience fewer philosophical difficulties in acknowledging our 
Lord’s Divinity, we reply that our faith cannot ‘consent thus 
‘propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. We cannot thus sacri- 
fice the substance of the first truth of the Creed that we 
‘may retain the phraseology of the second. We dare not thus 
degrade, or rather annihilate, the very idea of God, even for 
the sake of securing a semblance (more it could not be) of 
those precious consolations which the Christian heart seeks 
and finds at the Manger of the Divine Child in Bethlehem, or 
before the Cross of the Lord of Glory on Mount Calvary. 

No: the Divinity of Jesus is not divinity in the sense of 
Socinianism. It is no mere manifestation whether of the highest 
human goodness, or of the noblest of divine gifts. It is not 
merely a divine presence vouchsafed to the soul; it is not 
merely an intercommunion of the soul and God, albeit main- 
tained even ceaselessly—maintained in its fulness from moment 
to moment. Such indeed was the high grace of our Lord’s 
sinless Humanity, but that grace was not itself His Divinity. 
For a work of grace, however beautiful and perfect, is one thing ; 
an Uncreated Divine Essence is another. In the Socinian sense 
of the term, you all, my Christian brethren, are, or may be, 
divine ; you may shew forth God’s moral glory, if less fully, yet 
not less truly, than did Jesus. By adoption, you too are sons 
of God; and the Church teaches that each of you was made 
a partaker of the Divine Nature at his baptism. But suppose 
that neither by act, nor word, nor thought, you have done aught 
to forfeit that blessed gift, do 1 forthwith proceed to profess 
my belief in your divinity? And why not? Is it not because 
1 may not thus risk a perilous confusion of thought, issuing 
in a degradation of the Most Holy Name? Your life of grace 
is as much a gift as your natural life; but however glorious 
may be the gift, aye, though it raise you from the dust to the 
very steps of God’s Throne, the gift is a free gift after re and 

LECT. 


an the sense of Socinianism. 31 


its greatness does but suggest the interval which parts the 
recipient from the inexhaustible and boundless Life of the 
Giver. 

Most true indeed it is that the perfect holiness which shone 
forth from our Lord’s Human Life, has led thousands of souls 
to perceive the truth of His essential Godhead. When once it 
is seen that His moral greatness is really unique, it is natural 
to seek and to accept, as a basis of this greatness, His possession 
of a unique relationship to the Fountain of all goodness». Thus 
the Sermon on the Mount leads us naturally on to those dis- 
courses in St. John’s Gospel in which Christ unveils His 
Essential Oneness with the Father. But the ethical premiss 
is not to be confused with the ontological conclusion. It is true 
that a boundless love of man shone forth from the Life of 
Christ ; it is true that each of the Divine attributes is com- 
mensurate with the Divine Essence. It is true that ‘he that 
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’ But it is 
not true that every moral being which God blesses by His 
Presence is God. The Divine Presence, as vouchsafed to Chris- 
tian men, is a gift superadded to and distinct from the created 
personality to which it is accorded: there was a time when 
it had not been given, and a time may come when it will be 
withdrawn. Such a Presence may indeed in a certain secondary 


b ‘Je mehr sich so dem erkennenden Glauben die Ueberzeugung von der 
Hinzigkeit der sittlichen Hoheit Christi erschliesst, desto natirlicher ja 
nothwendiger muss es nun auch von diesem festen Punkte aus demselben 
Glauben werden, mit Verstandniss Christo in das Gebiet Seiner Reden zu 
folgen, wo Er Seiner eigenthiimlichen und einzigen Beziehung zu dem Vater 
gedenkt. Jesu Heiligkeit und Weisheit, durch die Er unter den siindigen, 
vielirrenden Menschen einzig dasteht, weiset so, da ste nicht kann noch will 
als rein subjektives, menschliches Produkt angesehen werden, auf einen 
iibernatirlichen Ursprung Seiner Person. Diese muss, um inmitten. der 
Siinderwelt begreiflich zu sein, aus einer eigenthiimlichen und wunderbar 
schépferischen That Gottes abgeleitet, ja es muss in Christus, wenn doch 
Gott nicht deistisch von der Welt getrennt sondern in Liebe ihr nahe und 
wesentlich als Liebe zu denken ist, von Gott aus betrachtet eine Incarnation 
gottlicher Liebe, also gétilichen Wesens gesehen werden, was Ihn als den 
Punkt erscheinen lasst, wo Gott und -die Menscheit einzig und innigst 
geeinigt sind. Freilich, man lisst sich in diesem Stiicke noch so oft 
durch einen abstracten, subjectiven Moralismus irre machen, der die Tiefe 
des Ethischen nicht erfasst. Aber wer tiefer blickend auch von einer 
ontologischen und metaphysischen Bedeutung des LEthischen weiss, dem 
muss die Hinzigkeit der Heiligkeit und Liebe Christi ihren Grund in einer 
Einzigkeit auch Seines Wesens haben, diese aber in Gottes Sich mittheil- 
ender, offenbarender Liebe.’ (Dorner, Person Christi, Bd. ii. pp. 1211, 
1212.) 


1 


32 Christ ts not the ‘inferior god’ of Arianism. 


sense ‘divinize’ a created person’, robing him with so much of 
moral beauty and force of deity as ἃ creature can bear. But 
this blessed gift does not justify us in treating the creature to 
whom it is vouchsafed as the Infinite and Eternal God. When 
Socinianism deliberately names God, it means equally with 
ourselves, not merely a Perfect Moral Being, not merely Perfect 
Love and Perfect J ustice, but One Whose Knowledge and 
Whose Power are as boundless as His Love. It does not mean 
that Christ is God in this, the natural sense of the word, when 
it confesses His moral divinity; yet, beyond all controversy, 
this full and natural sense of.the term is the sense of the 
Nicene Creed. 

No: Jesus Christ is not divine inthe sense of Arius. He 
is not the most eminent and ancient of the creatures, decorated 
by the necessities of a theological controversy with That Name 
which a serious piety can dare to yield to One Being alone. 
Ascribe to the Christ of Arius δὴ antiquity as remote as you 
will from the age of the Incarnation, place him at a height 
as high as any you can conceive, above the highest archangel ; 
still what, after all, is this ancient, this super-angelic being 
but a creature who had a beginning, and who, if the Author of 
his existence should so will, may yet cease to be? Such a being, 
however exalted, is parted from the Divine Essence by a 
fathomless chasm ; whereas the Christ of Catholic Christendom 
is internal to That Essence; He is of one Substance with the: 
Father—sépoovoros τῷ Πατρί : and in this sense, as distinct from 
any other, He is properly and literally Divine. 

This assertion of the Divinity of Jesus Christ depends on 
a truth beyond itself. It postulates the existence in God of 


certain real distinctions having their necessary basis in the ὦ 


Essence of the Godhead. That Three such distinctions exist is 
a matter of Revelation. In the common language of the 
Western Church these distinct Forms of Being are named Per- 
sons. Yet that term cannot be employed to denote Them, 
without considerable intellectual caution. As apphed to men, 
Person implies the antecedent conception of a species, which is 
determined for the moment, and by the force of the expression, 
into a single incommunicable modification of being4, But the 


¢ 2 St. Peter i. 4: Wa διὰ τούτων [sc. ἐπαγγελμάτων] γένησθε θείας 
κοινωνοὶ φύσεως. 

ἃ So runs the definition of Boethius. ‘Persona est nature rationalis 
individua substantia.’ (De Pers. et Duabus Naturis, ὁ. 3.) Upon which 


[ LECT. 


_ Lhe doctrine implesflypostatic distinctions in Gon.33 


conception of species is utterly inapplicable to That One Supreme 
Essence Which we name God; and, according to the terms of 
the Catholic doctrine, the same Essence belongs to Each of the 
Divine Persons. Not however that we are therefore to suppose 
nothing more to be intended by the revealed doctrine than three 
varying relations of God in His dealings with the world. On 
the contrary, His Self-Revelation has for its basis certain eternal 
distinctions in His Nature, which are themselves utterly anterior 
to and independent of any relation to created life. Apart from 
these distinctions, the Christian Revelation of an Eternal Father- 
hood, of a true Incarnation of God, and of a real communication 
of His Spirit, is but the baseless fabric of a dream’. These 
three distinct ‘Subsistences δ᾿ which we name Father, Son, and 
Spirit, while they enable us the better to understand the mystery 
of the Self-sufficing and Blessed Life of God before He sur- 
rounded Himself with created beings, are also strictly compatible 
with the truth of the Divine Unitys. And when we say that 


St. Thomas observes: ‘ Conveniens est ut hoc nomen (persona) de Deo 
dicatur ; non tamen eodem modo quo dicitur de creaturis, sed excellentiori 
modo.’ (Sum. Th., τᾶ, qu. 29, a, 3.) When the present use of οὐσία and 
ὑπόστασις had become fixed in the Hast, St. Gregory Nazianzen tells us that 
in the formula ‘ula οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, οὐσία signifies τὴν φύσιν τῆς 
θειότητος, while ὑποστάσεις points to τὰς τῶν τριῶν ἰδιότητας. He observes 
that with this sense the Westerns were in perfect agreement; but he deplores 
the poverty of their theological language. They had no expression really equi- 
valent to ὑπόστασις, as contrasted with οὐσία, and they were therefore obliged 
to employ the Latin translation of πρόσωπον that they might avoid the ap- 
pearance of believing in three οὐσίαι. (Orat. xxi. 46.) St. Augustine laments the 
necessity of having to say ‘quid Tria sint, Que Tria esse fides vera pronuntiat,’ 
(De Trin. vii. ἢ. 7.) ‘Cum ergo queritur quid Tria, vel quid Tres, conferimus 
nos ad inveniendum aliquod speciale vel generale nomen, quo complectamur 
hec Tria: neque occurrit animo, quia excedit supereminentia Divinitatis 
usitati eloquit facultatem.’ (1bid.) ‘Cum conaretur humana inopia loquendo 
proferre ad hominum sensus, quod in secretario mentis pro captu tenet de 
Domino Deo Creatore suo, sive per piam fidem, sive per qualemcunque intel- 
ligentiam, timutt dicere tres essentias, ne intelligeretur in {ὦ Summd diquali- 
tate ulla diversitas. Rursus non esse tria quedam non poterat dicere, quod 
Sabellius quia dixit, in heresim lapsus est. ... Quesivit guid Tria diceret, et 
dixit substantias sive personas, quibus nominibus non diversitatem intelligt 
voluit, sed singularitatem noluit.’ (De Trin. vii. n. 9.) Cf. Serm. cxvii. 7, 
ccxv. 3, ccxliv, 4. On the term Person, see further St. Athan. Treatises, i. 155, 
note f. (Lib. Fath.) 

e Cf. Wilberforce on the Incarnation, p. 152. : 

f ‘Subsistentiz, relationes subsistentes.’ Sum. Th. 1%. qu. 29. a. 2; and 
qu. 40. ἃ. 2. 

& This compatibility is expressed by the doctrine of the mep:xépnois—the 
safeguard and witness of the Divine Unity. St. John xiv.11; 1 Cor. ii. 11. 
ah: doctrine, as ‘ protecting the Unity of God, without entrenching on the 
I D 


34 Objectors. (1) The school of AA sthetical historians. 


Jesus Christ is God, we mean that in the Man Christ Jesus, 
the Second of these Persons or Subsistences, One in Essence 
with the First and with the Third, vouchsafed to become 
Incarnate. 

IV. The position then which is before us in these lectures is 
briefly the following: Our Lord Jesus Christ, being truly and 
perfectly Man, is also, according to His Higher Pre-existent 
Nature, Very and Eternal God ; since it was the Second Person 
of the Ever Blessed Trinity, Who, at the Incarnation, robed 
Himself with a Human Body and a Human Soul. Such explicit 
language will of course encounter objections in more than one 
quarter of the modern world ; and if of these objections one or 
two prominent samples be rapidly noticed, it is possible that, at 
least in the case of certain minds, the path of our future discus- 
sion will be cleared of difficulties which are at present more or 
less distinctly supposed to obstruct it. 

(a) One objection to our attempt in these lectures may be 
expected to proceed from that graceful species of literary activity 
which can be termed, without. our discrediting it, Historical 
fEstheticism. The protest will take the form of an appeal to 
the sense of Beauty. True Beauty, it will be argued, is a 
creation of nature; it is not improved by being meddled with. 
The rocky hill-side is no longer beautiful when it has been 
quarried ; nor is the river-course, when it has been straightened 
and deepened for purposes of navigation; nor is the forest which 
has been fenced and planted, and made to assume the disciplined 
air of a symmetrical plantation. In like manner, you urge, that 
incomparable Figure whom we meet in the pages of the New 
Testament, has suffered in the apprehensions of orthodox 
Christians, from the officious handling of a too inquisitive 
Scholasticism. As cultivation robs wild nature of its beauty, 
even so, you maintain, is ‘definition’ the enemy of the fairest 
creations of our sacred literature. You represent ‘definition’ as 
ruthlessly invading regions which have been beautified by the 
freshness and originality of the moral sentiment, and as sub- 
stituting for the indefinable graces of a living movement, the 
grim and stiff artificialities of a heartless logic. You wonder at 
the bad taste of men who can bring the decisions of Nicza and 
Chalcedon into contact with the story of the Gospels. What is 


" perfections of the Son and the Spirit, may even be called the characteristic of 
Catholic Trinitarianism, as opposed to all counterfeits, whether philosophical, 
Arian, or oriental,” Newman’s ‘Arians,’ p.190, 1sted. Cf. Athan. Treatises, 
ii. 403, note i. 

[ LECT. 


This school ignores the solemn question at issue. 35 


there in common, you ask, between these dead metaphysical 
formule and the ever-living tenderness of that matchless Life ? 
You protest that you would as readily essay to throw the text of 
Homer or of Milton into a series of syllogisms, that you would 
with as little scruple scratch the paint from a masterpiece 
of Raffaelle with the intention of subjecting it to a chemical 
analysis, as go hand in hand with those Church-doctors who 
force Jesus of Nazareth into rude juxtaposition with a world of 
formal thought, from which, as you conceive, He is severed by 
the intervention of three centuries of disputation, and still more 
by all which raises the highest forms of natural beauty above the 
awkward pedantry of debased art. 

Well, my brethren, if the object of the Gospel be attained 
when it has added one more chapter to the poetry of human 
history, when it has contributed one more Figure to the world’s 
gallery of historical portraits, upon which a few educated persons 
may periodically expend some spare thought and feeling ;—if 
this be so, you are probably right. Plainly you are in pursuit 
of that which may nourish sentiment, rather than of that which 
can support moral vigour or permanently satisfy the instinct of 
truth. Certainly your sentiment of beauty may be occasionally 
shocked by those direct questions and rude processes, which are 
necessary to the investigation of intellectual truth and to the 
sustenance of moral life. You would repress these processes ; 
you would silence these questions ; or at least you would not 
explicitly state your own answer to them. Whether, for instance, 
the stupendous miracle of the Resurrection be or be not as cer- 
tain as any event of public interest which has taken place in 
Europe during the present year, is a point which does not affect, 
as it seems, the worth or the completeness of your Christology. 
Your Christ is an Epic; and you will suffer no prosaic scholiast 
to try his hand upon its pages. Your Christ is a portrait ; 
and, as we are all agreed, a portrait is a thing to admire, and not 
to touch. 

But there is a solemn question which must be asked, and 
which, if a man is in earnest, he will inevitably ask; and that 
question will at once carry him beyond the narrow horizon of 
a literary estheticism in his treatment of the matter before us. 
. ». My brethren, where is Jesus Christ now? and what is He? 
Does He only speak to us from the pages which were traced by 
His followers eighteen centuries ago? Is He no more than the 
first of the shadows of the past, the first of memories, the first of 
biographies, the most perfect of human ideals? Is He only an 
1 | D2 | 


36 ἤὝογο and What ἐς Our Lord now ? 


Ideal, after all? Does He reign, only in virtue of a mighty 
tradition of human thought and feeling in His favour, which 
creates and supports His imaginary throne? Is He at this 
moment a really living Being? And if living, is He a human 
ghost, flitting we know not where in the unseen world, and 
Himself awaiting an award at the hands of the Everlasting? or 
is He a super-angelic Intelligence, sinless and invested with 
judicial and creative powers, but as far separated from the 
inaccessible Life of God as must be even the first of creatures 
from the everlasting Creator? Does He reign, in any true sense, 
either on earth or in heaven? or is His Regal Government in 
any degree independent of the submission or the resistance which 
His subjects may offer to it? Is He present personally as a living 
Power in this our world? Has He any certain relations to you ἢ 
Does He think of you, care for you, act upon you? Can He help 
you? Can He save you from your sins, can He blot out their 
stains and crush their power, can He deliver you in your death- 
agony from the terrors of dissolution, and bid you live with Him 
in a brighter world for ever? Can you approach Him now, 
commune with Him now, cling to Him now, become one with 
Him now, not by an unsubstantial act of your own imaginations, 
but by an actual objective transaction, making you incorporate 
with His Life? Or is the Christian answer to these most press- 
ing questions a weakly delusion, or at any rate too definite a 
statement ; and must we content ourselves with the analysis of 
an historical Character, while we confess that the Living Per- 
sonality which once created and animated It may or may not be 
God, may or may not be able to hear us and help us, may or may 
not be in distinct conscious existence at this moment, may or 
may not have been altogether annihilated some eighteen hundred 
years ago? Do you urge that it is idle to ask these questions, 
since we have no adequate materials at hand for dealing with 
them? That is a point which it is hoped may be more or less 
cleared up during the progress of our present enquiry. But if 
such questions are to remain unanswered, do not shut your eyes 
to the certain consequence. A Christ who is conceived of as 
only pictured in an ancient literature may indeed furnish you 
with the theme of a magnificent poetry, but he cannot be the 
present object of your religious life. A religion must have for, 
its object an actually Living Person: and the purpose of the 
definitions which you deprecate, is to exhibit and assert the exact 
force of the revealed statements respecting the Eternal Life of 


Christ, and so to place Him as a Living Person in all His Divine. 
uk oe [ LECT.. 


‘Objectors. (2) The Antt-doctrinal Moraksts. 37 


Majesty and all His Human Tenderness before the eye of the 
soul which seeks Him. When you fairly commit yourself to 
the assertion that Christ is at this moment living at all, you 
leave the strictly historical and ssthetical treatment of the Gos- 
pel record of His Life and character, and you enter, whether it 
be in a Catholic or in an heretical spirit, upon the territory of 
Church definitions. In your little private sphere, you bow to 
that practical necessity which obliged great Fathers and Coun- 
cils, often much against their will, to take counsel of the Spirit 
Who illuminated the collective Church, and to give point and 
strength to Christian faith by authoritative elucidations of Chris- 
tian doctrine. Nor are you therefore rendered insensible to 
the beauty of the Gospel narrative, because you have discovered 
that thus to ascertain and bear in mind, so far as Revelation 
warrants your effort, what is the exact Personal dignity and what 
the enduring prerogatives of Him in Whom you have believed, is 
in truth a matter of the utmost practical importance to your 
religious life. 

(8) But the present enquiry may be objected to, on higher 
grounds than those of literary and esthetic taste. ‘Are there 
not,’ it will be pleaded, ‘moral reasons for deprecating such dis- 
cussions? Surely the dogmatic and theological temper is suf- 
ficiently distinct from the temper which aims, beyond everything 
else, at moral improvement. Surely good men may be indifferent 
divines, while accomplished divines may be false or impure at 
heart. Nay more, are not morality and theology, not merely 
distinct, but also more or less antagonistic interests? Does not 
the enthusiastic consideration of dogmatic problems tend to 
divert men’s minds from that attention which is due to the 
practical obligations of life? Is not the dogmatic temper, you 
ask, rightly regarded as a species of “intellectual ritualism” which 
lulls men into the belief that they have true religion at heart, 
when in point of fact they are merely gratifying a private taste 
and losing sight of- honesty and sober living in the intoxicating 
study of the abstractions of controversy? On the other hand, will 
not a high morality shrink with an instinctive reverence from 
the clamorous and positive assertions of the theologians? In 
particular, did Jesus Christ Himself require at the hands of His 
disciples a dogmatic confession of belief in His Divinity? Was 
He not content if they acted upon His moral teaching, if they 
embraced that particular aspect of moral obligations which 18. of 


bh Ecce Homo, p. 69, sqq. 


1 


38 Channing on the study of Christ's character. 


the highest importance to the well-being of society, and which 
we have lately termed the Enthusiasm of Humanity?’ This is 
what is urged ; and then it is added, ‘Shall we not best succeed 
in doing our duty if we try better to understand Christ’s Human 
Character, while we are careful to keep clear of those abstract 
and transcendental questions about Him, which at any rate have 
not promoted the cause of moral progress ?’ 

This language is notoriously popular in our day; but the sub- 
stantial objection which it embodies has been already stated by 
a writer whom it is impossible to name without mingled admi- 
ration and sorrow,—admiration for his pure and lofty humanity, 
—sorrow for the profound errors which parted him in life and 
-in death from the Church of Jesus Christ. ‘Love to Jesus 
Christ,’ says William Channing, ‘depends very little on our con- 
ception of His rank in the scale of being. On no other topic 
have Christians contended so earnestly, and yet it is of secondary 
importance. To know Jesus Christ is not to know the precise 
place He occupies in the Universe; it is something more: it 
is to look into His mind; it is to approach His soul; to 
comprehend His spirit, to see how He thought and felt and 
purposed and loved.,.1am persuaded,’ he continues, ‘that 
controversies about Christ’s Person have in one way done 
great injury. They have turned~attention from His character. 
Suppose that, as Americans, we should employ ourselves in 
debating the questions, where Washington was born, and from 
what spot he came when he appeared at the head of our armies; 
and that in the fervour of these contentions we should overlook 
the character of his mind, the spirit that moved within him, 

. how unprofitably should we be employed? Who is it 
that understands Washington? Is it he that can settle his rank 
in the creation, his early history, his present condition ? or he to 
whom the soul of that good man is laid open, who comprehends 
and sympathizes with his generous purposes 1.’ | 

Channing’s illustration of his position in this passage is im- 
portant. It unconsciously but irresistibly suggests that indiffer- 
ence to the clear statement of our Lord’s Divinity is linked to a 
fundamental assumption of its falsehood. Doubtless Washing- 
ton’s birthplace and present destiny is for the Americans an 
altogether unpractical consideration, when placed side by side 
with the study of his character. But the question had never 
been raised whether the first of religious duties which a 


i Works, vol. ii. p. 145. 
[ LECT. 


Moral obligation of facing the dogmatic question. 39 


creature should pay to the Author and End of his existence was 
or was not due to Washington. Nobody has ever asserted that 
mankind owes to the founder of the American Republic the 
tribute of a prostrate adoration in spirit and in truth. Had it 
occurred to Channing’s mind as even possible that Jesus Christ 
was more than a mere man who lived and died eighteen cen- 
turies ago, he could not have permitted himself to make use of 
such an illustration. To do justice to Channing, he had much 
too clear and fine an intellect to imagine that the fundamental 
question of Christianity could be ignored on moral grounds. 
Those who know anything of his works are aware that his own 
opinion on the subject was a very definite one, and that he has 
stated the usual arguments on behalf of the Socinian heresy with 
characteristic earnestness and precision. 

My brethren, all are agreed as to the importance of studying 
and copying the Human Character of Jesus Christ. Whether it 
be really possible to have a sincere admiration for the Character 
of Jesus Christ without believing in His Divinity, is a question 
which I shall not shrink from considering hereafterJ. Whether 
a true morality does not embrace, as one part of it, an honest 
acceptance and profession of all attainable religious Truth, is a 
question which men can decide without being theologians. As 
for reverence, there is a time to keep silence, and a time to 
speak. Reverence will assuredly speak, and that plainly, when 
silence would dishonour its Object : the reverence which is always 
silent as to matters of belief may be but the drapery of a profound 
scepticism, which lacks the courage to unveil itself before the 
eyes of men. Certainly our Lord did not Himself exact from 
His first followers, as an indispensable condition of discipleship, 
any profession of belief in His Godhead. But why? Simply 
because His requirements are proportioned to the opportunities 
of mankind. He had taught as men were able to bear His 
teaching x. Although His precepts, His miracles, His character, 
His express language, all pointed to the Truth of His Godhead, 
the conscience of mankind was not laid under a formal obligation 
to acknowledge It until at length He had been defined! to be 
‘the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, 
by the Resurrection from the dead.’ Our present moral relation, 
then, to the truth of Christ’s Divinity differs altogether from 
that in which His first disciples were placed. It is a simple 
matter of history that Christendom has believed the doctrine for 


ὁ See Lecture IV. k St. John xvi. 12. 
1 Rom. i. 4: τοῦ δρισθέντος υἱοῦ Θεοῦ. 


1] 


40 Moral relations of belef and worship. 


eighteen centuries ; but besides this, the doctrine challenges at 
our hands, as I have already intimated, a moral duty as its 
necessary expression both in the sanctuary of our own thought 
and before the eyes of men. 

Let us face this aspect of the subject in its concrete mdi 
every-day form. Those whom I now see around me are without 
exception, or almost without exception, members of the Church 
of England. If any here have not the happiness to be commu- 
nicants, yet, at least, my brethren, you all attend the ordinary 
Sunday morning service of our Church. In the course of doing 
so, you sing the Te Deum, you repeat several times the Gloria 
Patri; but you also kneel down, or profess to kneel down, as 
joining before God and man in the Litany. Now the second 
petition in the Litany runs thus: ‘O God the Son, Redeemer 
of the world, have mercy upon us miserable sinners.’ What do 
you seriously mean to do when you join in that petition? Whom. 
are you really addressing? . What is the basis and ground of 
your act? What is its morality ? If Jesus Christ is merely a 
creature, is He in a position to have mercy upon you? Are you 
doing dishonour to the Most High by addressing Christ in these 
terms at all? Channing has said that the petition, ‘By Thine 
agony and bloody sweat, by Thy cross and passion, Good Lord, 
deliver us,’ is appalling™. On the Socinian hypothesis, Chan- 
ning’s language is no exaggeration: the Litany is an ‘ appalling’ 
prayer, as the Gloria Patri is an ‘appalling’ doxology. Nor 
would you escape from this moral difficulty, if unhappily you 
should refuse to join in the services of the Church. Your 
conscience cannot decline to decide in favour of the general 
duty of adoring Jesus Christ, or against it. And this decision 
presupposes the resolution, in one sense or the other, of the dog- 
matic question on which it depends. Christ either is, or He is 
not Gop. The worship which is paid to Christ either ought to 
be paid to Him, or it ought to be, not merely withheld, but 
denounced. It is either rigorously due from all Christians to 
our Lord, or it is an outrage on the rights of God. In any case 
to take part in a service which, like our Litany, involves the 
prostrate adoration of Jesus Christ, without explicitly recognis- 
ing His right to receive such adoration, is itself immoral. If to 
be true and honest in our dealings with each other is a part of 
mere natural virtue, surely to mean what we say when we are 
dealing with Heaven is not less an integral part of morality», 

m Unitarian Christianity, Works, vol. ii. p. 541. 

» Bp. Butler, Analogy, ii. 1. p. 157. ‘Christianity, even what is peculiarly 

[ LECT. ; 


Objectors. (3) The school of Subjective Pretism. 41 


I say nothing of that vast unseen world of thought and feeling 
which in the soul of a Christian believer has our Blessed Saviour 
for its Object, and the whole moral justification of which depends 
upon the conception which we form of Christ’s ‘rank in the 
scale of being.’ It is enough to point out to you that the dis- 
cussion in hand has a practical, present, and eminently a moral 
interest, unless it be consistent with morality to use in the presence 
of God and man, a language which we do not believe, or as to 
the meaning of which we are content to be indifferent. 
_ (y) Once more. It may be urged, from a widely different 
quarter, that our enquiry is dangerous, if not to literary or 
moral interests, yet to the spirit of simple Christian piety. 
‘Take care,’ so the warning may run, ‘lest, instead of preaching 
the Gospel, you should be merely building up a theological 
pyramid. Beware of sacrificing spiritual objects to intellectual 
ones. Surely the great question for a sinner to consider is 
whether or not he be justified before God: do not then let us 
bury the simple Gospel beneath a heap of metaphysics.’ 
Now the matter to be considered is whether this absolute 
separation between what is assumed to be the ‘simple Gospel’ 
and what is called ‘metaphysics’ is really possible.. In point of 
fact the simple Gospel, when we come to examine it, is neces- 
sarily on one side metaphysical. Educated men, at: least, will 
not be scared by a term, which a scarcely pardonable ignorance 
may suppose to denote nothing more than the trackless region 
of intellectual failure. If the Gospel is real to you; if you 
believe it to be true, and possess it spiritually and intellectually; 
you cannot but see that it leads you on to the frontier of a 
world of thought which you may yourselves shrink from entering, 
but which it is not prudent to depreciate. You say that the 
main question is to know that you are justified? Very well; 
but, omitting all other considerations, let me ask you one ques- 
tion: Who is the Justifier? Can He really justify if He is only 
Man? Does not His power to ‘save to the uttermost those that 
come unto God by Him’ depend upon the fact that He is Him- 
self Divine? Yet when, with St. John, you confess that He is 
the Eternal Logos, you are dealing quite as distinctly with a 


so called, as distinguished from natural religion, has yet somewhat very 
- important, even of a moral nature. For, the office of our Lord being made 
known, and the relation He stands in to us, the obligation of religious regards 
to Him is plainly moral, as much as charity to mankind is; since this obliga- 
tion arises, before external commands, immediately out of that His office and 
relation itself.’ 


1 


42 Christian piety requires a definite C. hristology. 


question of ‘metaphysics,’ as if you should discuss the value of 
οὐσία and ὑπόστασις in primitive Christian Theology. It is true 
that such discussions will carry you beyond the region of Scrip- 
ture terminology ; but, at least to a sober and thoughtful mind, 
can it really matter whether a term, such as ‘ Trinity,’ be or be - 
not in Scripture, if the area of thought which it covers be 
identical with that contained in the Scripture statements®? And, 
to undervalue those portions of truth which cannot be made 
rhetorically or privately available to excite religious feeling, is to 
accept a principle which, in the long run, is destructive of the 
Faith. In Germany, Spener the Pietist held no mean place 
among the intellectual ancestors of Paulus and of Strauss. In 
England, a gifted intellect has traced the ‘ phases’ of its progres- 
sive disbelief ; and if, in its downward course, it has gone so far 
as to deny that Jesus Christ was even a morally righteous Man, 
its starting-point was as nearly as possible that of the earnest 
but shortsighted piety, which imagines that it can dare actively 
to exercise thought on the Christian Revelation, and withal to 
ignore those ripe decisions which we owe to the illuminated 
mind of Primitive Christendom. 

There is no question between us, my brethren, as to the 
supreme importance of a personal understanding and contract 
between the single soul and the Eternal Being Who made and 
Who has redeemed it. But this understanding must depend 
upon ascertained Truths, foremost among which is that of the 
Godhead of Jesus Christ. And in these lectures an attempt will 
be made to lay bare and to re-assert some few of the bases upon 
which that cardinal Truth itself reposes in the consciousness of 
the Church, and to kindle perchance, in some souls, a fresh sense 
of its unspeakable importance. It will be our object to examine 
such anticipations of this doctrine as are found in the Old Testa- 
ment P, to note how it is implied in the work of Jesus Christ 4, 
and how inseparable it is from His recorded Consciousness of 
His Personality and Mission", to trace its distinct, although 
varying assertion in the writings of His great Apostles’, and in 
the earliest ages of His Church t, and finally to shew how in- 
timate and important are its relations to all that is dearest to 
the heart and faith of a Christian ἃ, 


ο Sum. Th. 1%, qu. 29. a. 3. Waterland, Works, iii. 652. Importance of 
Doctrine of H. Trin. οἱ 7. ‘The sense of Scripture is Scripture.’ Dr. Mill’s 
Letter on Dr. Hampden’s Bampton Lectures, p. 14. See Lect. VIII. 

P Lect. 11. 4 Lect. ITI. t Lect. IV. 
® Lect. V, VI. t Lect. VII. « Lect. VIII. 
[ LECT. 


Warnings and hopes. 43 


It must be a ground of rejoicing that throughout these 166-᾿ 
tures we shall keep thus close to the Sacred Person of our Lord 
Himself. And, if indeed, none of us as yet believed in His 
Godhead, it might be an impertinence on the part of the preacher 
to suggest any spiritual advice which takes for granted the 
conclusion of his argument. But you who, thank God, are 
Christians by living conviction as well as by baptismal privilege, 
must already possess too strong and too clear a faith in the 
truth before us, to be in any sense dependent on the success or 
the failure of a feeble human effort to exhibit it. You at least 
will endeavour, as we proceed, to bear steadily in mind, that He 
of Whom we speak and think is no mere tale or portrait of the 
ancient world, no dead abstraction of modern or of medizval 
thought, but a living Being, Who is an observant witness alike 
of the words spoken in His Name and of the mental and moral 
response which they elicit. If we must needs pass in review the 
erring thoughts and words of men, let us be sure that our final 
object is not a criticism of error, but the clearer apprehension 
and possession of truth. They who believe, may by reason of 
the very loyalty and fervour of their devotion, so anxiously and 
eagerly watch the fleeting, earth-born mists which for a moment 
have threatened to veil the Face of the Sun of Righteousness, as 
to forget that the true weal and safety of the soul is only assured 
while her eye is persistently fixed on His imperishable glory. 
They who have known the aching misery of earnest doubt, may 
perchance be encouraged, like the once sceptical Apostle, to 
probe the wounds with which from age to age error has lacerated 
Christ’s sacred form, and thus to draw from a nearer contact 
with the Divine Redeemer the springs of a fresh and deathless 
faith, that shall win and own in Him to all eternity the 
unclouded Presence of its Lord and God. 


LECTURE IL 


ANTICIPATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE IN THE OLD 
TESTAMENT. 


The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through 
faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abrahum, saying, In thee shall 
all nations be blessed.—GAt. iii. 8, 


Ir we endeavour to discover how often, and by what modes 
of statement, such ‘a doctrine as that of our Lord’s Divinity 
is anticipated in the Old Testament, our conclusion will be 
materially affected by the belief which we entertain respecting 
the nature and the structure of Scripture itself. At first sight, 
and judged by an ordinary literary estimate, the Bible presents 
an appearance of being merely a large collection of hetero- 
geneous writings. Historical records, ranging over many 
centuries, biographies, dialogues, anecdotes, catalogues of moral 
maxims, and accounts of social experiences, poetry, the most 
touchingly plaintive and the most buoyantly triumphant, pre- 
dictions, exhortations, warnings, varying in style, in authorship, 
in date, in dialect, are thrown, as it seems, somewhat arbitrarily 
into a single volume. No stronger tie is supposed to have 
bound together materials so various and so ill-assorted, than 
the interested or the too credulous industry of some clerical 
caste in a distant antiquity, or at best than such uniformity 
in the general type of thought and feeling as may naturally 
be expected to characterize the literature of a nation or of 
a race. But beneath the differences of style, of language, and 
of method, which are undeniably prominent in the Sacred 
Books, and which appear so entirely to absorb the attention 
of a merely literary observer, a deeper insight will discover in 


Scripture such manifest unity of drift and purpose, both moral 


and intellectual, as to imply the continuous action of a Single 
Mind. To this unity Scripture itself bears witness, and 


nowhere more emphatically than in the text before us. 
[ LECT. 


A αυνις.. κἰμονω ᾿. -. 


Principle of an Organic Unity in Floly Scripture. 45 


Observe that St. Paul does not treat the Old Testament 
as being to him what Hesiod, for instance, became to the 
later Greek world. He does not regard it as a great reperto- 
rium or storehouse of quotations, which might be accidentally 
or fancifully employed to illustrate the events or the theories 
of a later age, and to which accordingly he had recourse for 
purposes of literary ornamentation. On the contrary, St. Paul’s 
is the exact inverse of this point of view. According to 
St. Paul, the great doctrines and events of the Gospel dis- 
pensation were directly anticipated in the Old Testament, If 
the sense of the Old Testament became patent in the New, 
it was because the New Testament was already latent in the 
Old®, προϊδοῦσα δὲ ἡ γραφὴ ὅτι ἐκ πίστεως δικαιοῖ τὰ ἔθνη ὁ Θεὸς, 
προευηγγελίσατο τῷ ᾿Αβραάμ. Scripture is thus boldly identified 
with the Mind Which inspires it; Scripture is a living 
Providence. The Promise to Abraham anticipates the work of 
the Apostle ; the earliest of the Books of Moses determines 
the argument of the Epistle to the Galatians. Such a position 
is only intelligible when placed in the light of a belief in the 
fundamental Unity of all Revelation, underlying, and strictly 
compatible with its superficial variety. And this true, internal 
Unity of Scripture, even when the exact canonical limits of 
Scripture were still unfixed, was a common article of belief 
to all Christian antiquity. It was common ground to the 
sub-apostolic and to the Nicene age; to the East and to the 
West; to the School of Antioch and to the School of Alex- 
andria ; to mystical interpreters like St. Ambrose, and to lite- 
ralists fike St. Chrysostom ; to cold reasoners, such as Theodoret, 
and to fervid poets such as Ephrem the Syrian; to those who, 
with Origen, conceded much to reason, and to those who, 
with St. Cyril or St. Leo, claimed much for faith. Nay, this 
belief in the organic oneness of Scripture was not merely 
shared by schools and writers of divergent tendencies within 
the Church; it was shared by the Church herself with her 
most vehement heretical opponents. Between St. Athanasius 
and the Arians there was no question as to the relevancy of 
the reference in the book of Proverbs» to the pre-existent 
Person of our Lord, although there was a vital difference 
between them as to the true sense and force of that reference. 
Scripture was believed to contain an harmonious and integral. 


8 St. Aug. Quest. in Ex. qu. 73: ‘quanquam et in Vetere Novum lateat, 
et in Novo Vetus pateat,’ > Prov. viii. 22, 


| 


46 Organic Unity of Scripture consistent with tts 


body of Sacred Truth, and each part of that body was treated 
as being more or less directly, more or less ascertainably, 
in correspondence with the rest. This belief expressed itself 
in the world-wide practice of quoting from any one book 
of Scripture in illustration of the mind of any other book. 
Instead of illustrating the sense of each writer only from 
other passages in his own works, the existence of a sense common 
to all the Sacred Writers was recognised, and each writer 
was accordingly interpreted by the language of the others, 
To a modern naturalistic eritic it might seem a culpable, 
or at least an undiscriminating procedure, when a Father 
illustrates the Apostolical Epistles by a reference to the Pen- 
tateuch, or even one Evangelist by another, or the dogmatic 
sense of St. Paul by that of St. John. And unquestionably, 
in a merely human literature, such attempts at illustration 
would be misleading. The different intellectual horizons, modes 
of thought, shades and turns of feeling, which constitute the 
peculiarities of different writers, debar us from ascertaining, 
under ordinary circumstances, the exact sense of any one 
writer, except from himself. In an uninspired literature, such 
as the Greek or the English, it would be absurd to appeal 
to a primitive annalist or poet with a view to determining 
the meaning of an author of some later age. We do not 
suppose that Hesiod ‘foresaw’ the political doctrines of 
Thucydides, or the moral speculations of Aristotle. We do 
not expect to find in Chaucer or in Clarendon a clue to or 
a forecast of the true sense of Macaulay or of Tennyson. 
No one has ever imagined that either the Greek or the English 
literature is a whole in such sense that any common purpose 
runs persistently throughout it, or that we can presume upon 
the existence of a common responsibility to some one line 
of thought in the several authors who have created it, or 
that each portion is under any kind: of obligation to be in 
some profound moral and intellectual conformity with the rest. 
But the Church of Christ has ever believed her Bible to be 
throughout and so emphatically the handiwork of the Eternal 
Spirit, that it is no absurdity in Christians to cite Moses 
as foreshadowing the teaching of St. Paul and of St. John. 
According to the tenor of Christian belief, Moses, St. Paul, 
and St. John are severally regarded as free yet docile organs 
of One Infallible Intelligence, Who places them at different 
points along the line of His action in human history; Who 
through them and others, as the ages pass before Him, mee 

LECT. 


character as a record of successive Revelations. 47 


unveils His Mind; Who anticipates the fulness of later reve- 
lations by the hints contained in His earlier disclosures ; Who 
in the compass of His boundless Wisdom ‘reacheth from one 
end to another mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things¢.’ 

Such a belief in the organic unity of Scripture is not fatal 
to a recognition of those differences between its several portions, 
upon which some modern critics would lay an exaggerated 
emphasis. When St. Paul recognises an organic connection 
between the distant extremities of the records of Revelation, 
he does not debar himself from recognising differences in form, 
in matter, in immediate purpose, which part the Law of Moses 
from the writings of the New Testament4. The unlikeness 
which subsists between the head and the lower limbs of an 
animal is not fatal to their common share in its nervous 
system and in the circulation of its blood. Nay more, this 
oneness of Scripture is a truth compatible with the existence 
within its compass of different measures and levels of Revela- 
tion. The unity of consciousness in a human life is not 
forfeited by growth of knowledge, or by difference of cireum- 
stances, or by varieties of experience. Novatian compares 
the unfolding of the Mind of God in Revelation to the gradual 
breaking of the dawn, attempered as it is to the human eye, 
which after long hours of darkness could not endure a sudden 
outflash of noonday sunlight®. The Fathers trace in detail the 
application of this principle to successive revelations in Scrip- 
ture, first, of the absolute Unity of God, and afterwards, of 
Persons internal to that Unityf. The Sermon on the Mount 
contrasts its own higher moral level with that of the earlier 
dispensation’. Ethically and dogmatically the New Testament 
is an advance upon the Old, yet both are within the Unity 
of Inspiration. Different degrees of light do not imply any 
intrinsic contrariety. If the Epistle to the Galatians points 
out the moral incapacity of the Mosaic Law, the Epistle to 
the Hebrews teaches us its typical and unfailing significance. 
If Christian converts from Judaism had been ‘called out of 

¢ Wisd. viii. 1. 

9 6, g. cf. Gal. iii. 23-25 ; Rom. x. 4; Heb. viii. 13. 

® Novatian, de Trin. c. 26: ‘Gradatim enim et per incrementa fragilitas 
humana nutriri debet, . . periculosa enim sunt que magna sunt, si repentina 
sunt. Nam etiam lux solis subita post tenebras splendore nimio insuetis 
oculis non ostendet diem, sed potius faciet czecitatem.’ 

f St. Epiphanius, Heres. 74.10; St. Gregor. Nazianzen, Orat. xxxi. ἢ, 26. 
Cf. Kuhn, Dogmatik, Band ii. p. 5. 

& St. Matt. v. 21, 22, 27, 28, 33, 34; comp. Ibid. xii. 5-8. 


11 | 


48 Larhest hints respecting the Divine Nature. 


darkness into God’s marvellous light}, yet still ‘ whatsoever 
things were written aforetime,’ in the Jewish Scriptures, ‘ were 
written for the learning’ of Christiansi. 

You will have anticipated, my brethren, the bearing of these 
remarks upon the question before us. There are explicit refer- 
ences to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity in the Old Testa- 
ment, which we can only deny by discrediting the historical 
value of the documents which contain them. But there are also 
occult references to this doctrine which we are not likely to 
detect, unless, while seeking them, we are furnished with an 
exegetical principle, such as was that of the organic unity of 
Scripture, as understood by the Ancient Church. The geologist 
can inform us from surface indications, where and at what depths 
to find the coal-field or the granite ; but we can all recognise 
granite or coal when we see them in the sunlight. Let us then 
first place ourselves under the guidance of the great minds of 
antiquity, with a view to discovering some of those more hidden 
allusions to the doctrine which are found in earlier portions of 
the Old Testament Scriptures ; and let us afterwards trace, how- 
ever hastily, those clearer intimations of it which abound in the 
later Messianic prophecies, and which are indeed so plain, that 
‘whoso runs may read them.’ 

I, (a) At the beginning of the Book of Genesis there appear 
to be intimations of the existence of a plurality of Persons’ 
within the One Essence of God. It is indeed somewhat remark- 
able that the full significance of the two words), by which Moses 
describes the primal creative act of God, was not insisted upon 
by the primitive Church teachers. It attracted attention in the 
middle ages, and it was more particularly noticed after the re-' 
vival of Hebrew Letters. When Moses is describing this Divine 
action, he joins a singular verb to a plural noun. - Language, it: 
would seem, thus submits to a violent anomaly, that she may the 
better hint at the mystery of Several Powers or Persons, Who’ 
not merely act together, but Who constitute a Single Agent. 
We are indeed told that this Name of God, Elohim, was borrowed 
from Polytheistic sources, that it was retained in its plural form 
in order to express majesty or magnificence, and that it was 
then united to singular verbs and adjectives in order to 
make it do the work of a Monotheistic Creed‘. But on the 
other hand, it is confessed on all sides that the promulgation 
and protection of a belief in the Unity of God was the central 

bh 1 St. Pet. ii. 9. i Rom. xv. 4. i Gen. i.1, OFX ἐγ. 

k Herder, Geist der Hebr, Podsie, Bd. i. p. 48. 
[ LECT, 


The Inner Life of God adumbrated in Genesis. 49 


and dominant object of the Mosaic literature and of the Mosaic 
legislation. Surely such an object would not have been im- 
perilled for no higher purpose than that of amplification. There 
must have been a truth at stake which demanded the risk. The 
Hebrew language could have described God by singular forms 
such as El, Eloah, and no question would have been raised as to 
the strictly Monotheistic force of those words. The Hebrew 
language might have ‘amplified’ the idea of God thus conveyed 
by less dangerous processes than the employment of a plural 
form. Would it not have done so, unless the plural form had 
been really necessary, in order to hint at the complex mystery 
of God’s inner Life, until that mystery should be more clearly 
unveiled by the explicit Revelations of a later day? The analo- 
gies of the language may indeed prove that the plural form of 
the word had a majestic force; but the risk of misunderstanding 
would surely have counterbalanced this motive for using it, un- 
less a vital need had demanded its retention. Nor will the 
theory that the plural noun is merely expressive of majesty in 
tombs 82, avail to account for the plural verb in the words, 
‘Let Us make man!’ In these words, which precede the final 
act and climax of the Creation, the early Fathers detected a 
clear intimation of a Plurality of Persons in the Godhead ™, 
The supposition that in these words a Single Person is in a 
dramatic colloquy with Himself, is less reasonable than the 
opinion that a Divine Speaker is addressing a multitude of in- 
ferior beings, such as the Angels. But apart from other con- 
siderations, we may well ask, what would be the ‘likeness’ or 
‘image’ common to God and to the Angels, in which man was to 
be created? or why should created essences such as the Angels 
be invited to take part in a Creative Act at all? Each of the 
foregoing explanations is really weighted with greater difficulties 
than the Patristic doctrine, to the effect that the verb, ‘Let Us 
make,’ points to a Plurality of Persons within the Unity of the 
One Agent, while the ‘ Likeness,’ common to All These Persons 
and itself One, suggests very pointedly Their participation in an 
Undivided Nature. And in such sayings as ‘ Behold the man 


1 Gen i. 26. 

m Cf. the references in Petavius, de Trinitate, ii. 7. 6. 

Ὁ “Non raro etiam veteres recentioresque interpretes, ut o’m>x de angelis 
intelligerent, theologicis potius quam exegeticis argumentis permoti esse 
videnter; cf. . . . Gen. i. 26, 27, ex quo Samaritani cum Abenezra 
hominem ad angelorum, non ad Dei, similitudinem creatum esse probant.’ 
Gesenius, Thesaur. in voc. DDR, 2. 


1] E 


50 A Threefold Personality in God, suggested by 


is become like One of Us°®,’ used with reference to the Fall, or 
‘Go to; let Us go down and there confound. their language P,’ 
uttered on the eve of the dispersion of Babel, it is clear that an 
equality of rank is distinctly assumed between the Speaker and 
Those Whom He is addressing. The only adequate alternative 
to that interpretation of these texts which is furnished by the 
Trinitarian doctrine, and which sees in them a preparation for 
the disclosures of a later age, is the violent supposition of some 
kind of pre-Mosaic Olympus, the many deities of which are upon 
a level of strict equality with each other4. But if this supposi- 
tion be admitted, how are we to account for the presence of such 
language in the Pentateuch at all? How can a people, con- 
fessedly religious and intelligent, such as were the Hebrews, 
have thus stultified their whole religious history and literature, 
by welcoming or retaining, in a document of the highest possible 
authority, a nomenclature which contained so explicit a denial of 
the first Article of the Hebrew Faith ¢ 

The true sense of the comparatively indeterminate language 
which occurs at the beginning of Genesis, is more fully explained 
by the Priestly Blessing which we find to be prescribed for ritual 
usage in the Book of Numbers". This blessing is spoken of as a 
putting the Name of Gods, that is to say, a symbol unveiling 
His Naturet, upon the children of Israel. Here then we dis- 
cover a distinct limit to the number of the Persons Who are 
hinted at in Genesis, as being internal to the Unity of God. 
The Priest is to repeat the Most Holy Name Three times. The 
Hebrew accentuation, whatever be its date, shews that the Jews 
themselves saw in this repetition the declaration of a mystery in 
the Divine Nature. Unless such a repetition had been designed 
to secure the assertion of some important truth, a single mention 
of the Sacred Name would have been more natural in a system, 
the object of which was to impress belief in the Divine Unity 
upon an entire people. This significant repetition, suggesting 


ο Gen. iii. 22. 290 ND. LXX. ὡς εἷς ἐξ ἡμῶν. 

P Gen. xi. 7. 

4 Klose, De polytheismi vestigiis apud Hebreos ante Mosen, Gotting. 1830, 
referred to by Kuhn, Dogmatik, Bd. ii. p. 10. 

τ Num. vi. 23-26. | s Ibid. ver. 27. 

t “Nach der biblischen Anschauung und inbesondere des A.T. ist iberhaupt 
der Zusammenhang zwischen Name und Sache ein sehr enger, und ein ganz 
anderer als im modernen Bewusstein, wo sich der Name meist zu einem bloss 
conventionellen Zeichen abgeschwicht hat ; der Name ist die Sache selbst, 
sofern diese in die Erscheinung tritt und erkannt wird, der ins Wort gefasste 
Ausdruck des Wesens.’ Kdénig, Theologie der Psalmen, p. 266, 

LECT. 


the Priestly Blessing and by the Vision of Lsaiah. 51 


without distinctly asserting a Trinity in the Being of God, did 
its work in the mind of Israel. It is impossible not to be struck 
with the recurrence of the Threefold rhythm of prayer or praise, 
again and again, in the Psalter¥. Again and again the poetical 
parallelism is sacrificed to the practical and theological object of 
making the sacred songs of Israel contain an exact acknowledg- 
ment of that inner law of God’s Nature, which had been 
shadowed eut in the Pentateuch. And to omit traces of this 
influence of the priestly blessing which are discoverable in Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel*, let us observe the crowning significance of 
the vision of IsaiahyY. In that adoration of the Most Holy 
Three, Who yet are One’, by the veiled and mysterious Sera- 
phim; in that deep self-abasement and misery of the Prophet, 
who, though a man of unclean lips, had yet seen with his eyes 
the King, the Lord of Hosts®; in that last enquiry on the part 
of the Divine Speaker, the very terms of which reveal Him as 
One and yet more than One>,—what a flood of almost Gospel 
light¢ is poured upon the intelligence of the elder Church! If 
we cannot altogether assert with the opponents of the Lutheran 
Calixtus, that the doctrine of the Trinity is so clearly contained 
in the Old Testament as to admit of being deduced from it with- 
out the aid of the Apostles and Evangelists; enough at least has 
been said to shew that the Old Testament presents us with a 
doctrine of the Divine Unity which is very far removed from 
the hard and sterile Monotheism ef the Koran. Within the 
Uncreated and Unapproachable Essence, Israel could plainly 
distinguish the shadows of a Truth which we Christians fully 
express at this hour, when we ‘acknowledge the glory of the 
Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty worship 
the Unity.’ 

(8) From these adumbrations of Personal Distinctions within 
the Being of God, we pass naturally to consider that series of 
remarkable apparitions which are commonly known as the Theo- 
phanies, and which form so prominent a feature in the early 
history of the Old Testament Scriptures. When we are told 
that God spoke to our fallen parents in Paradise4, and appeared 


u Cf. Ps. xxix. 4, 5, and 7, 8; xcvi. I, 2, and 7 8; ΟΧΥ. 9, 10,113 cxviii. 
2-4, and 10-12, and 15, 16. 

* On this subject, see Dr. Pusey’s Letter to the Bishop of London, p. 131. 

Y Isaiah vi. 2-8. z Ibid. ver. 3. a [bid. ver. 5. 

b Ibid. ver. 8. © Heb. i. 1. 

ἃ Gen. iii. 8: ‘They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the 
garden in the cool of the day.’ 


| 1] E 2 


52 The Theophanies. 


to Abram in his ninety-ninth year 8, there is no distinct intima- 
tion of the mode of the Divine manifestation. But when ‘Je- 
hovah appeared’ to the great Patriarch by the oak of Mamref, 
Abraham ‘lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, Three Men stood 
by hims.’ Abraham bows himself to the ground; he offers 
hospitality; he waits by his Visitors under the tree, and they 
eat», One of the Three is the spokesman ; he appears to bear 
the Sacred Name Jehovahi; he is seemingly distinguished from 
the ‘two angels’ who went first to Sodomj; he promises that 
the aged Sarah shall have a son, and that ‘all the nations of the 
earth shall be blessed in Abraham.’ With him Abraham 
intercedes for Sodom!; by him judgment is afterwards executed 
upon the guilty city. When it is said that ‘Jehovah rained 
upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah 
out of heaven™,’ a sharp distinction is established between a 
visible and an Invisible Person, each bearing the Most Holy 
Name. This distinction introduces us to the Mosaic and later 
representations of that very exalted and mysterious being, the 
mim ἽΝ or Angel of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord is cer- 
tainly distinguished from Jehovah; yet the names by which he 
is called, the powers which he assumes to wield, the honour 
which is paid to him, shew that in him there was at least a 
special Presence of God. He seems to speak sometimes in his 
own name, and sometimes as if he were not a created person- 
ality, but only a veil or organ of the Higher Nature That spoke 
and acted through him. Thus he assures Hagar, as if speaking 
in the character of an ambassador from God, that ‘the Lord had 
heard her affliction».’ Yet he promises her, ‘I will multiply thy 
seed exceedingly®,’ and she in return ‘called the Name of the 
Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest meP.’ He arrests 
Abraham’s arm, when the Patriarch is on the point of carrying 
out God’s bidding by offering Isaac as a sacrificed ; yet he asso- 
ciates himself with Him from Whom ‘Abraham had not with- 
held his son, his only son.’ He accepts for himself Abraham’s 
obedience as rendered to God, and he subsequently at a second 
appearance adds the promise, ‘In thy seed shall all the nations of 


5 Gen. xvii. I-3: ‘The Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I 
am the Almighty God. . . And Abram fell on his face: and God talked 


with him.’ f Thid. xviii. 1. 
85 Thbid. ver. 2. h Tbid. ver. 8. i Tbid. ver. 17. 
ji Compare Gen. xviii. 22 and xix. 1. LXX. ἦλθον δὲ of δύο ἄγγελοι. 

K Gen. xviii. 10, 18. 1 Tbid. vers. 23-33. m Ibid. xix. 24, 
= Ibid. xvi. 11. © Tbid. ver. 10. P Ibid. ver. 13. 


4 [bid, xxii. 11, 12. 
[ LECT. 


Lhe Theophanies. 53 


the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed My voicer.’ He 
appears to Jacob in a dream, he announces himself as ‘the God 
of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou 
vowedst a vow unto Me’. Thus he was ‘the Lord’ who in 
Jacob’s vision at Bethel had stood above the ladder and said, ‘I 
am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaact.’ 
He was, as it seems, the Chief of that angel-host whom Jacob 
met at Mahanaim"®; with him Jacob wrestled fora blessing at 
Peniel; of him Jacob says, ‘I have seen God face to face, and 
‘my life is preserved.’ When blessing the sons of Joseph, the 
dying Patriarch invokes not only ‘the God Which fed me all my 
life long unto this day,’ but also ‘the Angel which redeemed me 
from all evil*.’ In the desert of Midian, the Angel of the Lord 
appears to Moses ‘in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.’ 
The bush remains miraculously unconsumedy. ‘ Jehovah’ sees 
that Moses turns aside to see, and ‘ Elohim’ calls to Moses out 
of the midst of the bushz. The very ground on which Moses 
stands is holy ; and the Lawgiver hides his face, ‘for he was 
afraid to look upon God®.’ The Speaker from the midst.of the 
bush announces Himself as the God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob®. His are the Mercy, the Wisdom, 
the Providence, the Power, the Authority of the Most High? ; 
nay, all the Divine attributes®. When the children of Israel are 
making their escape from Egypt, the Angel of the Lord leads 
them; in the hour of danger he places himself between the camp 
of Israel and the host of Pharaoh4. How deeply Israel felt the 
value of his protecting care, we may learn from the terms of the 
message to the King of Edom®. God promises that the Angel 
shall keep Israel in the way, and bring the people to Canaan? ; 
his presence is a guarantee that the Amorites and other idola- 
trous races shall be cut offg. Israel is to obey this Angel, and 
to provoke him not; for the Holy ‘Name is in him.’ Even 
after the sin of the Golden Calf, the promised guardianship of 
the Angel is not forfeited ; while a distinction is clearly drawn 
between the Angel and Jehovah Himselfi. Yet the Angel is 


r Gen. xxii. 18. 8 Ibid. xxxi. 11, 13. ὁ Tbid. xxviii. 13. 


ἃ Tbid. xxxii. 1. x Tbid. xlviii. 15, 16. y Exod. iii. 1, 2. 
z Thbid. ver. 4. ® Ibid. ver. 6. b Ibid. vers. 7-14. 
© Ibid. vers. 14-16. ἃ Exod. xiv. 10. ¢ Num. xx. 16. 


f Exod. xxiii. 20; compare xxxii. 34. 

8 Ibid. xxiii. 23; cf. Joshua v. 13-15. 

h Exod. xxiii. 21, yp ‘Nw 55. 

i Tbid. xxxiii. 2, 3: “1 will send an angel before thee . . . for I will not 
go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people.’ 


1 | 


54 | Lhe Theophantes. 


expressly called the Angel of God’s Presence; he fully represents 
God. God must in some way have been present in him. No 
merely created being, speaking and acting in his own right, 
could have spoken to men, or have allowed men to act towards 
himself, as did the Angel of the Lord. Thus he withstands 
Balaam, on his faithless errand, and bids him go with the mes- 
sengers of Balak ; but adds, ‘Only the word that I shall speak 
unto thee, that thou shalt speak.’ As ‘Captain of the host of 
the Lord,’ he appears to Joshua in the plain of Jericho. Joshua 
worships God in him!; and the Angel asks of the conqueror of 
Canaan the same tokens of reverence as had been exacted from 
Moses™, Besides the reference in the Song of Deborah” to the 
curse pronounced against Meroz by the Angel of the Lord, the 
Book of Judges contains accounts of three appearances, in each 
of which we are scarcely sensible of the action of a created per- 
sonality, so completely is the language and bearing that of the 
Higher Nature present in the Angel. At Bochim he expostu- 
lates with the assembled people for their breach of the covenant 
in failing to exterminate the Canaanites. God speaks by him as 
in His own Name; ‘He refers to the covenant which He had 
made with Israel, and to His bringing the people out of Egypt ; 
He declares that, on account of their disobedience He will not 
drive the heathen nations out of the land®. In the account of his 
appearance to Gideon, the Angel is called sometimes the Angel 
of the Lord, sometimes the Lord, or Jehovah. . He bids Gideon 
attack the Midianite oppressors of Israel, and adds the promise, 
‘I will be with thee.’ Gideon places an offering before the 
Angel, that he may, if he wills, manifest his character by some 
sign. The Angel touches the offering with the end of his staff, 
whereupon fire rises up out of the rock and consumes the offering. 
The Angel disappears, and Gideon fears that he will die because 
he has seen ‘the Angel of the Lord face to face?P.’ When the 
wife of Manoah is reporting the Angel’s first appearance to 
herself, she says that ‘A man of God came’ to her, ‘and his 
countenance was like the countenance of the Angel of God, very 
terrible.’ She thus speaks of the Angel as of a Being already 


&k Exod. xxxiii. 14 ; compare Isaiah lxiii. 9. 

1 In Josh. vi. 2 the captain of the Lord’s Host (cf. ch. v. 14) appears to 
be called Jehovah. But cf. Mill, Myth. Int. p. 354. 

m Josh. v. 13-15; Exod. iii. 5 ; compare Exod. xxiii. 23. 

n Judges v. 23. ° Ibid. ii. 1-5. See Keil, Comm. in loc. 

Ρ Judg. vi. 11-22. Keil, Comm. in loc. See Hengstenberg, Christol. 
O. Test., vol. iv. append. iii. p. 292. 

[ LEOT. 


Who was the ‘Angel of the Lord?’ 55 


known to Israel. At his second appearance the Angel bids 
Manoah, who ‘ knew not that he was an Angel of the Lord,’ and 
offered him common food, to offer sacrifice unto the Lord. The 
Angel refuses to disclose his Name, which is ‘ wonderful 4.’ 
When Manoah offers a kid with a meat-offering upon a rock 
unto the Lord, the Angel mounts visibly up to heaven in the 
flame of the sacrifice. Like Gideon, Manoah fears death after 
such near contact with so exalted a Being of the other world. 
‘We shall surely die,’ he exclaims to his wife, ‘because we have 
seen God*,’ 

But you ask, Who was this Angel? The Jewish interpreters 
vary in their explanations’. The earliest Fathers answer with 
general unanimity that he was the Word or Son of God Himself. 
For example, in the Dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin proves 
against his Jewish opponent, that God did not appear to Abra- 
ham by the oak of Mamre, before the appearance of the ‘ three 
men,’ but that He was One of the Threet. Trypho admits this, 
but he objects that it did not prove that there was any God 
besides Him Who had appeared to the Patriarchs. Justin re- 
plies that a Divine Being, personally although not substantially 
distinct from the supreme God, is clearly implied in the state- 
ment that ‘the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, 
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.’ Trypho 
yields the point. Here it is plain that St. Justin did not sup- 
pose that a created being was called God on account of his 
mission ; St. Justin believes that One Who was of the substance 
of God appeared to Abraham*. Again, the Fathers of the first 
Synod at Antioch, in the letter which was sent to Paulus of 
Samosata before his deposition, state that the ‘Angel of the 


a wp, cf. Is. ix. 6. 

r Judges xiii. 6-22. Cf. Keil, Comm. in loc. Hengst. ubi supra. Vi- 
tringa de Angelo Sacerdote, obs. vi. 14. 

8 Cf. the authorities quoted by Drach, Lettres d’un Rabbin Converti, 
Lettre ii. p. 169. On the other side, Abenezra, in Exod. iii. 2. 

t With St. Justin’s belief that the Son and two Angels appeared to Abra- 
ham, cf. Tertullian. adv. Marc. ii. 27, iii. 9; St. Hil. de Trin. iv. 27. That 
three created Angels appeared to Abraham was the opinion of St. Augustine 
(De Civ. Dei, x. 8, xvi. 29). St. Ambrose sees in the ‘ three men’ an adum- 
bration of the Blessed Trinity: ‘Tres vidit et unum Dominum appellavit.’ 
De Abraham, i. c. 5; Prudent. Apotheosis, 28. This seems to be the sense 
of the English Church. See First Lesson for Evensong on Trinity Sunday. 

ἃ Gen. xix. 24. 

x Dial. cum Tryph. § 56, sqq. On the appearance in the burning bush, 
ef. Ibid. § 59-61; cf. too ch. 127. Comp. St. Justin, Apol. i. c. 63. 

II 


56 Opinion of the earlier Fathers, 


Father being Himself Lord and God, μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος ¥, 
appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses in the burning 
bushz.’ It is unnecessary to multiply quotations in proof of a 


fact which is beyond dispute ἃ, 

The Arian controversy led to a modification of that estimate 
of the Theophanies which had prevailed in the earlier Church. 
The earlier Church teachers had clearly distinguished, as Scripture 
distinguishes, between the Angel of the Lord, Himself, as they 
believed, Divine, and the Father. But the Arians endeavoured 
to widen this personal distinctness into a deeper difference, a 
difference of Natures. Appealing to the often-assigned ground > 
of the belief respecting the Theophanies which had prevailed in 
the ante-Nicene Church, the Arians argued that the Son had 
been seen by the Patriarchs, while the Father had not been seen, 
and that an Invisible Nature was distinct from and higher than 
a nature which was cognizable by the senses*. St. Augustine 
boldly faced this difficulty, and his great work on the Trinity 
gave the chief impulse to another current of interpretation in 
the Church. St. Augustine strenuously insists upon the Scrip- 
tural truth4 of the Invisibility of God as God*®. The Son, 


y This gloss of the LXX. in Is. ix. 6 was a main ground of the early 
Patristic application of the title of the Angel to God the Son. ‘ Although 
Malachi foretells our Lord’s coming in the Flesh under the titles of “the 
Lord,’ “the Angel,” or ‘‘ Messenger of the Covenant,’’ (chap. 111. 1) there is 
no proof that He is anywhere spoken of, absolutely as “the Angel,” or that 
His Divine Nature is so entitled.’ Dr. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 516, 
note I. 

z Mansi, Conc. i. p. 1035. 

8 Compare however St. Irenzeus adv. Her. iv. 7. § 4; Clem. Alex. Ped. i. 7 ; 
Theophilus ad Autol. ii. 31 ; Constit. Apostol. v. 20; Tertullian. adv. Prax. 
cap. 13, 14, and 15; St. Cyprian. adv. Judzos, ii. c. 5,6; St. Cyr. Hieros. 
Catech. 10 ; St. Hil. de Trin. lib. 4 and 5; St. Chrysost. Hom. in Genes. 42, 48; 
Theodoret, Interr. v. in Exod. (Op. i. p. 121), on Exod. iii. 2. Cf some 
additional authorities given by P. Vandenbroeck, De Theophaniis, sub Vet. 
Testamento, p. 17, sqq; Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. lib. i. ¢. 1. 

b e.g. cf. Tertullian. adv. Mare. ii. c. 27. 

¢ St. Aug. Serm. vii. n. 4. The Arian criticism ran thus: ‘ Filius visus est 
patribus, Pater non est visus: invisibilis autem et visibilis diversa natura est,’ 

ἃ St. John i. 18, &c. 

e ‘Tpsa enim natura vel substantia vel essentia, vel quolibet alio nomine 
appellandum est id ipsum, quod Deus est, quidquid illud est corporaliter vidert 
non potest.’ De Trin. ii. c. 18, n. 35. The Scotists, who opposed the general 
Thomist doctrine to the effect that a created angel was the instrument of the 
Theophanies, carefully guarded against the ideas that the substance of God 
could be seen by man in the body, or that the bodily form which they be- 
lieved to have been assumed was personally united to the Eternal Word, 
since this was peculiar to the Divine Incarnation, (Scotus in lib. ᾿ sent. 

LECT. 


how modified by SLA ugustine. 57 


therefore, as being truly God, was by nature as invisible as the 
Father. If the Son appeared to the Patriarchs, He appeared 
through the intermediate agency of a created being, who repre- 
sented Him, and through whom He spoke and actedf. If the 
Angel who represented Him spoke and acted with a Divine 
authority, and received Divine honours, we are referred to the 
force of the general law whereby, in things earthly and heavenly, 
an ambassador is temporarily put in the place of the Master who 
accredits himg. But Augustine further warns us against at- 
tempting to say positively, Which of the Divine Persons mani- 
fested Himself, in this or that instance, to Patriarchs or Prophets, 
except where some remarkable indications determine our con- 
clusion very decisively», The general doctrine of this great 
teacher, that the Theophanies were not direct appearances of a 
Person in the Godhead, but Self-manifestations of God through 
a created being, had been hinted at by some earlier Fathers}, 


dist. 8.) Scotus explains that the being who asswmes a bodily form, need 
only be ‘ intrinsecus motor corporis; nam tunc assumit, id est ad se sumit, 
quia ad operationes proprias sibi explendas utitur illo sicut instrumento.’ 

(Ibid. Scholion i.) 

f « Proinde illa omnia, que Patribus visa sunt, cum Deus illis saihtuaee 
suam dispensationem temporibus congruam preesentaretur, per creaturam 
facta esse, manifestum est ..... Sed jam satis quantum existimo.. . 
demonstratum est, . . . quod antiquis patribus nostris ante Incarnationem 
Salvatoris, cum Deus apparere dicebatur, voces illee ac species corporales per 
angelos facte sunt, sive ipsis loquentibus vel agentibus aliquid ex persona 
Dei, sicut etiam prophetas solere ostendimus, sive asswmentibus ex creaturd 
quod tpsi non essent, ubi Deus figurate demonstraretur hominibus ; quod 
genus significationum nec Prophetas omisisse, multis exemplis docet Scrip- 
tura.” De Trin. iii. 11, n. 22, 27. 

& ‘Sed ait aliquis: cur ergo Scriptum est, Dixit Dominus ad Moysen; et 
non potits, Dixit angelus ad Moysen? Quia cum verba judicis preco pro- 
nuntiat, non scribitur in Gestis, ille preeco dixit; sed ille judex; sic etiam 
loquente prophet& sancto, etsi dicamus Propheta dixit, nihil aliud quam 
Dominum dixisse intelligi volumus. Et si dicamus, Dominus dixit; pro- 
phetam non subtrahimus, sed quis per eum dixerit admonemus.’ De Trin. iii. 
Opis. ἢ. 13. 

h «Nihil aliud, quantum existimo, divinorum sacramentorum modesta et 
cauta consideratio persuadet, nisi ut temeré non dicamus, Quenam ex Trini- 
tate Persona cuilibet Patrum et Prophetarum in aliquo corpore vel simili- 
tudine corporis apparuerit, nisi cum continentia lectionis aliqua probabilia 
circumponit indicia. ... Per subjectam creaturam non solum Filium vel 
Spiritum Sanctum, sed etiam Patrem corporali specie sive similitudine mor- 
talibus sensibus significationem Sui dare potuisse credendum est.’ De Trin. ii. 
c. 18, n. 35. 

i Compare St. Ireneus adv. Her. iv. 20, ἢ. 7 and 24. ‘ Verbum naturaliter 
quidem invisibile, palpabile in hominibus factum.’ Origen (Hom. xvi. in 
Jerem.) speaking of the vision in Exod. iii. says, ‘God was here beheld in the 
Angel,’ 

11 | 


58 Szonzficance of the Theophanies. 


and was insisted on by contemporary and later writers of the 
highest authority*. This explanation has since become the 
predominant although by no means the exclusive judgment of 
the Church!; and if it is not unaccompanied by considerable 
difficulties when we apply it to the sacred text, it certainly 
seems to relieve us of greater embarrassments than any which it 

creates ™, | 
_ But whether the ante-Nicene (so to term it) or the Augustinian 
line of interpretation be adopted with respect to the Theophanies, 
no sincere believer in the historical trustworthiness of Holy 
Scripture can mistake the importance of their relation to the 
doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity. If the Theophanies were not, 
as has been pretended, mythical legends, the natural product of 
the Jewish mind at a particular stage of its development, but 
actual matter-of-fact occurrences in the history of ancient Israel, 
must we not see in them a deep Providential meaning? Whether 
in them the Word or Son actually appeared, or whether God 
made a created angel the absolutely perfect exponent of His 
Thought and Will, do they not point in either case to a purpose: 
in the Divine Mind which would only be realized when man had 
been admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God 
than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations ἢ 
Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and explanation, 
some Personal Self-unveiling of God before the eyes of His 
creatures? Would not God appear to have been training His 
people, by this long and mysterious series of communications, at 
length to recognise and to worship Him when hidden under, and 
indissolubly one with a created nature? Apart from the specific 
circumstances which may seem to have explained each Theophany 
at the time of its taking place, and considering them as a series 
of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in 


k St. Jerome (ed. Vall.) in Galat. 111. 19: ‘Quod in omni Veteri Testa- 
mento ubi angelus primum visus refertur et postea quasi Deus loquens 
inducitur, angelus quidem ver ex ministris pluribus quicunque est visus, sed 
in illo Mediator loquatur, Qui dicit; Ego sum Deus Abraham, etc. Nec 
mirum si Deus loquatur in angelis, cum etiam per angelos, qui in hominibus 
sunt, loquatur Deus in prophetis, dicente Zaccharia: et ait angelus, qui 
loquebatur in me, ac deinceps inferente ; hec dicit Deus Omnipotens.’ Cf. 
St. Greg. Magn. Mag. Moral. xxviii. 2; St. Athan. Or. iii. c. Arian. ὃ 14. 

1 The earlier interpretation has been more generally advocated by English 
divines. P. Vandenbroeck’s treatise already referred to shews that it still has 
adherents in other parts of the Western Church. 

m See especially Dr. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 515, note 20; p. 516, 
sqq. 
[ LECT. 


Doctrine of the Kochmah or Wisdom. 59 


harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture, as that they 
were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of 
ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of 
God ? 

(y) This preparatory service, if we may venture so to term it, 
which had been rendered to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity 
by the Theophanies in the world of sense, was seconded by the 
upgrowth and development of a belief respecting the Divine 
Kochmah or Wisdom in the region of inspired ideas. 

1. The ‘ Wisdom’ of the Jewish Scriptures is certainly more 
than a human endowment®, and even, as it would seem, more 
than an Attribute of God. It may naturally remind us of the 
Archetypal Ideas of Plato, but the resemblance is scarcely more 
than superficial. The ‘ Wisdom’ is hinted at in the Book of 
Job. In a well-known passage of majestic beauty, Job replies to 
his own question, Where shall the Wisdom ὁ be found? He re- 
presents Wisdom as it exists in God, and as it is communicated in 
the highest form to. man. In God,‘ the Wisdom’ is that Eternal 
Thought, in which the Divine Architect ever beheld His future 
creation Ρ, In man, Wisdom is seen in moral growth ; it is ‘ the 
fear of the Lord,’ and ‘to depart from evil.’ The Wisdom is 
here only revealed as underlying, on the one side, the laws of the 
physical universe, on the other, those of man’s moral nature. 
Certainly as yet, ‘Wisdom’ is not in any way represented as 
personal ; but we make a great step in passing to the Book of 
Proverbs. In the Book of Proverbs the Wisdom is co-eternal 
with Jehovah ; Wisdom assists Him in the work of Creation; 
Wisdom reigns, as one specially honoured, in the palace of the 
King of Heaven ; Wisdom is the adequate object of the eternal 
joy of God; God possesses Wisdom, Wisdom delights in God. 


n The word 97 is, of course, used in this lower sense. It is applied to 
an inspired skill in making priestly vestments (Exod. xxviii. 3), or sacred 
furniture generally (Ibid. xxxi. 6 and xxxvi. I, 2); to fidelity to known truth 
(Deut. iv.6 ; cf. xxxii. 6) ; to great intellectual accomplishments (Dan. i. 17). 
Solomon was typically ἘΞ: his ‘ Wisdom’ was exhibited in moral pene- 
tration and judgment (1 Kings ili. 28, x. 4, sqq.) ; in the knowledge of many 
subjects, specially of the works of God in the natural world (Ibid. iv. 33, 34); 
in the knowledge of various poems and maxims, which he had either composed 
or which he remembered (Ibid. iv. 32; Prov.i. 1). Wisdom, as communi- | 
cated to men, included sometimes supernatural powers (Dan. v. 41), but 
specially moral virtue (Ps. xxxvii. 30, li. 6; Prov. x. 31); and piety to God 
(Ps. οχὶ. 10). In God ΠΏΣΠΙ is higher than any of these; He alone originally 
possesses It (Job xii. 12, 13, xxviii. 12, sqq.). 

; Job xxviii, 12. ΠΏΣΠΠ. P Ibid. vers. 23-27. a Ibid. ver. 28. 
II 


60 Lhe ‘Wisdom’ in the Hebrew Scriptures, 


* Jehovah (says Wisdom) possessed Me in the beginning of His way, 
Before His works of old. 
I was set up from everlasting, 
From the beginning, or ever the earth was. 
When there were no depths, I was brought forth ; 
When there were no fountains abounding with water. 
Before the mountains were settled, 
Before the hills was I brought forth : 
While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, 
Nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 
When He prepared the heavens, I was there : OSs 
When He set a compass upon the face of the depth: 
When He established the clouds above : 
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep: 
When He gave to the sea His decree, 
That the waters should not pass His commandment : 
When He appointed the foundations of the earth : 
Then I was by Him, as-One brought up with Him: 
And I was daily His Delight, rejoicing always before Him; 
Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth ; 
And My delights were with the sons of men *,’ 


Are we listening to the language of a real Person or only of a 
poetic personification? A group of critics defends each hypo-— 
thesis ; and those who maintain the latter, point to the picture 
of Folly in the succeeding chapter’. But may not a study of 
that picture lead to a very opposite conclusion? Folly is there 
no mere abstraction, she is a sinful woman of impure life, ‘ whose 
guests are in the depths of hell.’ The work of Folly is the very 
work of the Evil One, the real antagonist of the Divine Koch- 
mah. folly is the principle of absolute Unwisdom, of consum- 
mate moral Evil. Folly, by the force of the antithesis, enhances 
our impression that ‘the Wisdom’ is personal, The Arians 
understood the word t which is rendered ‘ possessed’ in our Eng- 
lish Bible, to mean ‘ created,’ and they thus degraded the Wisdom 
to the level of a creature. But they did not doubt that this 
created Wisdom was a real being or person*%. Modern critics 


τ Prov. viii. 22-31. For Patristic expositions of this passage, see Petavius, 
de Trin. ii. 1. 
8 Prov. ix. 13-18. | 
t The Arians appealed to the LXX. reading ἔκτισε (not ἐκτήσατο). On 
κτίζειν as meaning any kind of production, see Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. lib. ii. 
c. 6, sec. 8. In a note on Athan. Treatises, ii. 342, Dr. Newman cites Aquila, 
St. Basil, St. Gregory Nyss. and St. Jerome, for the sense ἐκτήσατο. : 
« As Kuhn summarily observes: ‘Das war iiberhaupt nicht die Frage in 
christlichen Alterthum, ob hier von einem Wesen die Rede sei, das war allge- 
mein anerkannt, sondern von welcher Art, in welchem Verhiltniss zu Gott 
es gedacht sei.’ Dogmatik, ii. p. 29, note (2). : cn 
L e 


and in the Greek Sapiential Books. 61 


know that if we are to be guided by the clear certain sense of 
the Hebrew root x, we shall read ‘ possessed’ and not ‘ created,’ 
and they admit without difficulty that the Wisdom is uncreated 
by, and. co-eternal with the Lord Jehovah. But they resolve 
Wisdom into an impersonal and abstract idea or quality. The 
true interpretation is probably related to these opposite mistakes, 
as was the Faith of the Church to the conflicting theories of the 
Arians and the Sabellians. Each error contributes something to 
the cause of truth ; the more ancient may teach us that the 
Wisdom is personal; the more modern, that it is uncreated and 
co-eternal with God. 

2. But even if it should be thought, that ‘the personified idea 
of the Mind of God in Creation,’ rather than the presence of ‘a 
distinct Hypostasis,’ is all that can with certainty be discovered 
in the text of the Book of Proverbs ; yet no one, looking to the 
contents of those sacred Sapiential Books, which lie outside the 
precincts of the Hebrew Canon, can well doubt that something ~ 
more had been inferred by the most active religious thought in 
the Jewish Church. The Son of Sirach, for instance, opens his 
great treatise with a dissertation on the source of Wisdom. 
Wisdom is from all eternity with God ; Wisdom proceeds from 
God before any finite thing, and is poured out upon all His 
Works%. But Wisdom, thus ‘created from the beginning before 
the world,’ and having an unfailing existence ®, is bidden by God 
to make her ‘dwelling in Jacob, and her inheritance in Israel >.’ 
Wisdom is thus the prolific mother of all forms of moral beauty ὃ ; 
she is given to all of God’s true children4; but she is specially 
resident in the holy Law, ‘which Moses commanded for an 
heritage unto the congregations of Jacob®.’ In that beautiful 
chapter which contains this passage, Wisdom is conceived of as 
all-operative, yet as limited by nothing ; asa physical yet also as 
a spiritual power; as eternal, and yet having definite relations to 
time ; above all, as perpetually extending the range of her fruitful 


x This both in Hebrew and (with one exception) in Arabic. Cf. Gesenius, 


Thesaurus, in 7p and Lis, So, too, the Syr. Jers. Neither Gen. xiv. 19 
nor Deut. xxxii. 6 require that m2) should be translated ‘created,’ still less 
Ps. cxxxix. 13, where it means ‘to have rights over.’ Gesenius quotes no 
other examples. The current meaning of the word is ‘to acquire’ or 
‘ possess, as is proved by its certain sense in the great majority of cases where 
it is used. 

y So apparently Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. x. part iii, 
sec. 2. 

2 Kcclus. i, 1-10. 8. Thid. xxiv. 9. b Ibid. vers. 8-12. 

© Ibid. vers. 13-18. ἃ Ibid. e Ibid. ver. 23. 
u | 


62 Ldentety of the Alexandrian ‘Wisdom’ 


self-manifestationf Not to dwell upon language to the same 
effect in Baruch 8, we may observe that in the Book of Wisdom 
the Sophia is more distinctly personal). If this Book is less 
prominently theocratic than Kcclesiasticus, it is even more ex- 
plicit as to the supreme dignity of Wisdom, as seen in its unique 
relation to God. Wisdom is a pure stream flowing from the 
glory of the Almighty; Wisdom is that spotless mirror which 
reflects the operations of God, and upon which He gazes as He 
worksk; Wisdom is the Brightness of the Everlasting Light! ; 
Wisdom is the very Image of the Goodness of God™. Material 
symbols are unequal to doing justice to so spiritual an essence : 
‘ Wisdom is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order 
ef the stars; being compared with the light she is found before 
108. ‘Wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth 
and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness®.’ Her 
sphere is not merely Palestine, but the world, not this or that 
age, but the history of humanity. All that is good and true in 
human thought is due to her: ‘in all ages entering into holy 
souls she maketh them friends of God and prophets?.’ Is there 
not here, in an Alexandrian dress, a precious and vital truth 
sufficiently familiar to believing Christians? Deo we not already 
seem to catch the accents of those weighty formule by which 
Apostles will presently define the pre-existent glory of their 
Majestic Lord? Yet are we not steadily continuing, with no 
very considerable measure of expansion, in that very line of 
sacred thought, to which the patient servant of God in the 
desert, and the wisest of kings in Jerusalem, have already, and 
so authoritatively, introduced us ἢ 

3. The doctrine may be traced at a stage beyond, in the 
writings of Philo Judeus. We at once observe that its form is 
altered; instead of the Wisdom or Sophia we have the Logos or 
Word. Philo indeed might have justified the change of phrase- 
ology by an appeal even to the Hebrew Scriptures. In the 
Hebrew Books, the Word of Jehovah manifests the energy of 


f Cf. especially Ecclus. xxiv. 5-8, 10-18, 25-28, and i. 14-17. 

& Compare Baruch iii. 14, 15, 29-32, 35, 36, and the remarkable verse 37. 

h Liicke, who holds that in the Book of Proverbs and in Ecclesiasticus _ 
there is merely a personification, sees a ‘ dogmatic hypostatizing’ in Wisd. vii. 
22, sqq. Cf. too Dahne, Alexandrinische Religionsphilosophie, ii. 134, &c. 

i Wisd. vii. 25. : 

k Ibid. 26: ἔσοπτρον ἀκηλίδωτον τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐνεργείας. 

1 Ibid. ἀπαύγασμα φωτὸς ἀϊδίου, compare Heb. i. 3. 

τὰ Tbid. εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος τοῦ Θεοῦ, compare 2 Cor. iv. 4, Col. i. 15. 

Ὁ Tbid. ver. 29. © Ibid. ver. 24, compare ver. 27. ΡΊΡΙα, a: 27. 

LECT. 


with the Logos of Philo Fudacus. 63 


God: He creates the heavens?; He governs the world". Ac- 
cordingly, among the Palestinian Jews, the Chaldee paraphrasts 
almost always represent God as acting, not immediately, but 
through the mediation of the Memra’ or Word. In the Greek 
Sapiential Books, the Word is apparently identical with the 
Wisdomt; but the Wisdom is always prominent, the Word is 
rarely mentioned, Yet. the Logos of Ecclesiasticus is the 
organ of creation’, while in the Book of Wisdom the Logos is 
clearly personified, and is a minister of the Divine Judgment *. 
In Philo, however, the Sophia falls into the background, and 


a Ps, xxxiii. 6. TT 127. 

r Ps, cxlvii. 15 ; Isai. lv. 11. § 37109 or N27. 

t Thus in Ecclus. xxiv. 3 the σοφία Θεοῦ uses the language which might 
be expected of the λόγος Θεοῦ, in saying that she came forth from the Mouth 
of the Most High; while in chap. i. 5 we are told expressly that πηγὴ σοφίας 
Adyos Θεοῦ. In the Book of Wisdom σοφία is identified on the one side 
with the ἅγιον πνεῦμα παιδείας (chap. i. 4, 5), and the πνεῦμα Κυρίου (ver. 7); 
πνεῦμα and σοφία are united in the expression πνεῦμα σοφίας (vii. 7; compare 
ix. 17). On the other side σοφία and the λόγος are both instruments of 
creation (Wisd. ix. 1,2; for the πνεῦμα, cf. Gen. i. 2, and Ps. xxxiii. 6), 
they both ‘come down from heaven’ (Ibid. ver. 10, and xviii. 15, and the 
πνεῦμα, ix. 17), and achieve the deliverance of Israel from Egypt (cf. xviii. 

15 with x. 15-20). The representation seems to suggest no mere ascription 
of identical functions to altogether distinct conceptions or Beings, but a 
real inner essential unity of the Spirit, the Word, and the Wisdom. ‘ Es ist 
an sich eine und dieselbe gittliche Kraft, die nach aussen wirksam ist, aber es 
sind verschiedene Beziehungen und Arten dieser Wirksamkeit, wornach sie 
Wort, Geist, Weisheit Gottes gennant wird.’ Kuhn, p. 27. That the 
πνεῦμα really pointed to a distinct Hypostasis in God became plain only at a 
later time to the mind of His people. On the relations of the m7 nn, the 
moor, and the m1 17 to each other, see Kuhn, p. 24. 

« Kuhn has stated the relation of the ‘Wisdom, ‘ Word,’ and ‘ Spirit’ to 
God and to each other, in the Sapiential Books, as follows :—‘ Die Unter- 
scheidung Gottes und Seiner Offenbarung in der Welt ist die Folie, auf der 
sich ein innerer Unterschied in Gott abspiegelt, der Unterschied Gottes nim- 
lich von Seinem Worte, Seiner Weisheit. Diese, wiewohl sie zunichst blosse 
EKigenschaften und somit Sein an Sich seiendes Wesen, oder Krifte und 
Wirksamkeiten Gottes nach aussen, somit dasselbe Wesen, sofern Es Sich in 
der Welt manifestirt, ausdriicken, erscheinen sofort tiefer gefasst als etwas fiir 
sich, unter dem Gesichtspunkt eines eigenen gittlichen Wesens, einer gitt- 
lichen Person. Unter einander verhalten sie sich aber so, dass einerseits 
Wort und Geist, desgleichen andrerseits Wort und Weisheit Gottes theils 
unterschieden, theils aber auch wieder wesentlich gleichbedeutend genommen 
sind, so dass ausser dem Hauptunterschiede Gottes von Seinem Andern noch 
ein weiterer, der Unterschied dieses Andern von einem Dritten hinzuzukom- 
men, zugleich aber auch die Identitét des ihnen (unter Sich und mit Gott) 
gemeinsamen Wesens angedeutet zu sein scheint.’ Lehre von Gottl. 
Dreieinigkeit, p. 23. 

VY Ecclus. xliii. 26. x Wisd. xviii. 15, 

Υ Philo distinguishes between Wisdom and Philosophy: Philosophy or 


11 | 


64 Double character of the mind of Philo. 


the Logos is the symbol of the general doctrine, for other reasons 
perhaps, but mainly as a natural result of Philo’s profound sym- 
pathy with Stoic and Platonic thought. If the Book of Wisdom 
adopts Platonic phraseology, its fundamental ideas are continuous 
with those of the Hebrew Scriptures%. Philo, on the contrary, 
is a hearty Platonist; his Platonism enters into the very marrow 
of his thought. It is true that in Philo Platonism and the 
Jewish Revelation are made to converge. But the process of their 
attempted assimilation is an awkward and violent one, and it 
involves the great Alexandrian in much involuntary self-contra- 
diction. Philo indeed is in perpetual embarrassment between 
the pressure of his intellectual Hellenic instincts on the one side, 
and the dictates of his religious conscience as a Jewish believer 
on the other. He constantly abandons himself to the currents 
of Greek thought around him, and then he endeavours to set 
himself right with the Creed of Sinai, by throwing his Greek 
ideas into Jewish forms. If his Logos is apparently moulded 
after the pattern of the νοῦς βασιλικὸς ἐν τῇ τοῦ Διὸς Pioec—the . 
Regal Principle of Intelligence in the Nature of Zeus—with 
which we meet in the Philebus of Plato®, Philo doubtless would 
fain be translating and explaining the mm 42 of the Hebrew 
Canon, in perfect loyalty to the Faith of Israel. The Logos of 
Philo evidently pre-supposes the Platonic doctrine of Ideas ; but 
then, with Philo, these Ideas are something more than the 
models after which creation is fashioned, or than the seals which 


wise living is the slave of Wisdom or Science; σοφία is ἐπιστήμη θείων καὶ 
ἀνθρωπίνων καὶ τῶν τούτων αἰτιῶν (Cong. Qu. Erud. Grat. §.14, ed. Mangey, 
tom. i. p. 530). Philo explains Exod. xxiv. 6 allegorically, as the basis of a 
distinction between Wisdom as it exists in men and in God, τὸ θεῖον γένος 
ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἄκρατον (Quis Rer. Div. Her. ὃ 38, i. p. 498). Wisdom is the 
mother of the world (Quod Det. Potiori Insid. ὃ 16, i. p. 202) ; her wealth 
is without limits, she is like a deep well, a perennial fountain, &c. But Philo 
does not in any case seem to personify Wisdom ; his doctrine of Wisdom is 
eclipsed by that_of the Logos. 

z Vacherot (Ecole d’Alexandrie, vol. i. p. 134, Introd.) says of Wisdom 
and Ecclesiasticus: ‘ Ces monumens renferment peu de traces des idées 
Grécques dont.ils semblent avoir précédé l’invasion en Orient.’ Ecclesiasticus 
was written in Hebrew under the High-Priesthood of Simon I, B.c. 303-284, 
by Jesus the Son of Sirach, and translated into Greek by his grandson, who 
came to reside at Alexandria under Ptolemy Euergetes. 

8 Plat. Philebus, p. 30. ‘There is not,’ says Professor Mansel, ‘the 
slightest evidence that the Divine Reason was represented by Plato as having 
a distinct personality, or as being anything more than an attribute of the 
Divine Mind.’ Cf. art. Philosophy, in Kitto’s Cycl. of Bibl. Literature, 
new ed, | 

[ LECT. 


elation of Philo’s Logos to his theosophy. 65 


are impressed upon concrete forms of existence>. The Ideas of 
Philo are energizing powers or causes whereby God carries out 
His plan of creation®. Of these energetic forces, the Logos, ac- 
cording to Philo, is the compendium, the concentration. Philo’s 
Logos is a necessary complement of his philosophical doctrine 
concerning God. Philo indeed, as the devout Jew, believes in 
God as a Personal Being Who has constant and certain dealings 
with mankind ; Philo, in his Greek moods, conceives of God not 
merely as a single simple Essence, but as beyond personality, 
beyond any definite form of existence, infinitely distant from all 
relations to created life, incapable of any contact even with a 
spiritual creation, subtilized into an abstraction altogether trans- 
cending the most abstract conceptions of impersonal being. It 
might even seem as if Philo had chosen for his master, not Plato 
the theologian of the Timezus, but Plato the pure dialectician of 
the Republic. But how is such an abstract God as this to be 
also the Creator and the Providence of the Hebrew Bible? Cer- 
tainly, according to Philo, matter existed before creation4 ; but 
how did God mould matter into created forms of life? This, 
Philo will reply, was the work of the Logos, that is to say, of 
the ideas collectively. The Philonian Logos is the Idea of 
ideas®; he is the shadow of God by which as by an instrument 
He made the worlds‘; he is himself the intelligible or Ideal 
World, the Archetypal Type of all creations. The Logos of 
Philo is the most ancient and most general of created things? ;. 


Ὁ Cf. Philo, de Mundi Opif. § 44, tom. i. p. 30; Legis Allegor. i. ὃ 9, 
tom. i. p. 47. 

© De Monarchid, i. § 6, tom. ii. p. 219: ὀνομάζουσι δὲ αὐτὰς οὐκ ἀπὸ σκο- 
ποῦ τινὲς τῶν Tap ὑμῖν ἰδέας, ἐπειδὴ ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων ἰδιοποιοῦσι, TA ἄτακτα 
τάττουσαι, καὶ τὰ ἄπειρα καὶ ἀόριστα καὶ ἀσχημάτιστα περατοῦσαι καὶ περιορί- 
ζουσαι καὶ σχηματίζουσαι καὶ συνόλως τὸ χεῖρον εἰς τὸ ἄμεινον μεθαρμοζόμεναι. 
Comp. the remarkable passage in De Vict. Offer. § 13, tom. ii. p. 261. 

ἃ In one passage only does Philo appear to ascribe to God the creation of 
matter. De Somn. i. § 13, tom. i. 632. If so, for once his Jewish conscience 
is too strong for his Platonism. But even here his meaning is at best doubt- 
ful. Cf. Dodllinger, Heid. und Judenth. bk. x. pt. 3, ὃ 5. 

€ De Mundi Opif. § 6; i. p. 5: ἰδέα τῶν ἰδεῶν ὁ Θεοῦ λόγος. 

f Legis Allegor. iii. 31; i. p. 106: σκιὰ Θεοῦ δὲ ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ ἐστιν ᾧ 
καθάπερ ὀργάνῳ προσχρησάμενος ἐκοσμοποίει. De Monarch, ii. § 5; tom. ii. 
225; De Cherub. § 35, tom. i. p. 162. 

ε De Mundi Opif. § 6, i. p. 5: 7 ἀρχέτυπος σφραγὶς, ὅν φαμεν εἶναι κόσμον 
νοητὸν, αὐτὸς ἂν εἴη Td ἀρχέτυπον παράδειγμα... ὃ Θεοῦ λόγος. The λόγος 
is dissociated from the παράδειγμα in De Conf. Ling. c. xiv. i. 414. 

h Legis Allegor. iii. 61, i. p. 121: καὶ 6 λόγος δὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑπεράνω παντός 
ἐστι τοῦ κόσμου, καὶ πρεσβύτατος καὶ γενικώτατος τῶν ὅσα γέγονε. 

1] Ε 


66 Is the Logos of Philo personal ? 


he is the Eternal Image of Godi; he is the band whereby all 
things are held togetherk; he fills all. things, he sustains all 
things!. Through the Logos, God, the abstract, the intangible, 
the inaccessible God, deals with the world, with men. Thus the 
Logos is mediator as well as creator™; he is a high-priest and 
intercessor with God; he interprets God to man; he is an am- 
bassador from heaven®. He is the god of imperfect men, who 
cannot ascend by an ecstatic intuition to a knowledge of the 
supreme God°; he is thus the nutriment of human souls, and a 
source of spiritual delightsP. The Logos is the eldest angel or 
the archangel4; he is God’s Eldest, His Firstborn Son'; and 
we almost seem to touch upon the apprehension of that sublime, 
that very highest form of communicated life, which is exclusive 
of the ideas of inferiority and of time, and which was afterwards 
so happily and authoritatively expressed by the doctrinal formula 
of an eternal generation. But, as we listen, we ask ourselves 
one capital and inevitable question : Is Philo’s Logos a personal 
being, or is he after all a pure abstraction? Philo is silent ; for 
on such a point as this the Greek and the Jew in him are hope- 


! De Conf. Ling. § 28, i. 427. ‘Although,’ says Philo, ‘we are not in a 
position to be considered the Sons of God, yet we may be the children τῆς 
ἀϊδίου εἰκόνος αὐτοῦ, λόγου Tov ἱερωτάτου. 

k De Plantat. § 2, I. 331: δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἄῤῥηκτον τοῦ παντὸς 6 γεννή- 
σας ἐποίει πατήρ. 

1 De Mundo, § 2, ii. p. 604: τὸ ὀχυρώτατον καὶ βεβαιότατον ἔρεισμα τῶν 
ὅλων ἐστίν. Οὗτος ἀπὸ τῶν μέσων ἐπὶ τὰ πέρατα καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς μέσα 
ταθεὶς δολιχεύει τὸν τῆς φύσεως δρόμον ἀήττητον, συνάγων πάντα τὰ μέρη καὶ 
σφίγγων. 

m Quis Rer. Div. Her. § 42, i. p. 501: τῷ δὲ ἀρχαγγέλῳ καὶ πρεσβυτάτῳ 
λόγῳ δωρεὰν ἐξαίρετον ἔδωκεν ὃ τὰ ὅλα γεννήσας πατὴρ, ἵνα μεθόριος στὰς τὸ 
γενόμενον διακρίνῃ τοῦ πεποιηκότος. : 

n Tbid.: 6 δ᾽ αὐτὸς ἱκέτης μέν ἐστι τοῦ θνητοῦ κηραίνοντος ded πρὸς τὸ 
ἄφθαρτον, πρεσβυτὴς δὲ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος πρὸς τὸ ὑπήκοον. Cf. De Somniis, § 37, 
i. 653; De Migr. Abraham. ὃ 18, i. 452. De Gigant. § 11: 6 ἀρχιερεὺς 
λόγος. 

4 Legis Allegor. iii. § 73, i. 128: οὗτος [sc. ὃ λόγος] yap ἡμῶν τῶν ἀτελῶν 
ἂν εἴη θεὸς, τῶν δὲ σοφῶν καὶ τελείων, ὃ πρῶτος, i.e. God Himself. Cf. § 32 
and § 33, i. 107. 

P Legis Allegor. iii. § 59, i. 120: Ὁρᾷς τῆς ψυχῆς τροφὴν ola ἐστί; Λόγος 
Θεοῦ συνεχὴς, ἐοικὼς δρόσῳ. Cf. also ὃ 62. De Somniis, § 37,1. 691: τῷ 
γὰρ ὄντι TOU θείου λόγου ῥύμη συνεχὴς μεθ᾽ ὁρμῆς Kal τάξεως φερομένη, πάντα 
διὰ πάντων ἀναχεῖται καὶ εὐφραίνει. 

a De Conf. Ling. § 28, i. 427: κἂν μηδέπω μέντοι τυγχάνῃ τις ἀξιόχρεως 
dv υἱὸς Θεοῦ προσαγορεύεσθαι, σπουδαζέτω κοσμεῖσθαι κατὰ τὸν πρωτόγονον αὖ- 
τοῦ Λόγον, τὸν ἄγγελον πρεσβύτατον ὡς ἀρχάγγελον πολυώνυμον ὑπάρχοντα. 

r De Conf. Ling. § 14, i. 414: τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ πρεσβύτατον υἱὸν ὃ τῶν 
ὄντων ἀνέτειλε Πατὴρ, ὃν ἑτέρωθι πρωτόγονον ὠνόμασε. [ 

LECT. 


Philo’s tndectston. 67 


lessly at issue. Philo’s whole system and drift of thought must 
have inclined him to personify the Logos; but was the personified 
Logos to be a second God, or was he to be nothing more than a 
created angel? If the latter, then he would lose all those lofty 
prerogatives and characteristics, which, platonically speaking, as 
well as for the purposes of mediation and creation, were so en- 
tirely essential to him. If the former, then Philo must break 
with the very first article of the Mosaic creed; he must renounce 
his Monotheism. Confronted with this difficulty, the Alexandrian 
wavers in piteous indecision ; he really recoils before it. In one 
passage indeed he even goes so far as to call the Logos a ‘second 
Gods,’ and he is accordingly ranked by Petavius among the 
forerunners of Arius. But on the whole he appears to fall back 
upon a position which, however fatal to the completeness of his 
system, yet has the recommendation of relieving him from an 
overwhelming difficulty. After all that he has said, his Logos is 
really resolved into a mere group of Divine ideas, into a purely 
impersonal quality included in the Divine Beingt. That advance 


5. Fragment quoted from Euseb. Prep. Evang. lib. vii. c. 13 in Phil. Oper. 
ii. 625: θνητὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀπεικονισθῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πατέρα τῶν 
ὅλων ἐδύνατο, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐκείνου Λόγος. But the 
Logos is called θεός only ἐν καταχρήσει. Op. i. 655. 

t That Philo’s Logos is not a distinct Person is maintained by Dorner, 
Person Christi, Einleitung, p. 23, note i. 44, sqq. note 40; by Dodllinger, 
Heid. und Judenthum, bk. x. p. iii. ὃ 5; and by Burton, Bampton Lectures, 
note 93. The opposite opinion is that of Gfrdrer (see his Philo und die 
Jiidisch-Alexandrinische Theologie), and of Liicke (see Professor Mansel, in 
Kitto’s Encycl., art. Philosophy, p. 526, note). Professor Jowett, at one 
time, following Gfrorer, appears to find in Philo ‘the complete personification 
of the Logos,’ although he also admits that Philo’s idea of the Logos ‘ leaves 
us in doubt at last whether it is not a quality only, or mode of operation in 
the Divine Being.’ (Ep. of St. Paul, i. p. 510, 2nd ed.) He hesitates in- 
deed to decide the question, on the ground that ‘the word ‘‘person”’ has now 
a distinctness and unity which belongs not to that age.’ (p. 485.) Surely the 
idea (at any rate) of personality, whether distinctly analyzed or no, is a 
primary element of all human thought. It is due to Professor Jowett to call 
attention to the extent (would that it were wider and more radical!) to which 
he disavows Gfrérer’s conclusions. (Ibid. p. 454, note.) And I quote the 
following words with sincere pleasure: ‘The object of the Gospel is real, 
present, substantial,—an object such as men may see with their eyes and 
hold in their hands. . . . But in Philo the object is shadowy, distant, indis- 
tinct ; whether an idea or a fact we scarcely know. .. . Were we to come 
nearer to it, it would vanish away.’ (Ibid. p. 413, Ist ed.; p. 509, 2nd ed., 
in which there are a few variations.) A study of the passages referred to in 
Mangey’s index will, it is believed, convince any unprejudiced reader that 
Philo did not know his own mind ; that his Logos was sometimes impersonal 
and sometimes not, or that he sometimes thought of a personal Logos, and 
never believed in one. 

1 | F 2 


=. - -- «4. 7. | tot. ie. lll ee ee “ΜΠ > [we 7 Pr...” Se 


68 Philo and the New Testament. 


toward the recognition of a real Hypostasis,—so steady, as it 
seemed, so promising, so fruitful,—is but a play upon language, 
or an intellectual field-sport, or at best, the effort which precedes 
or the mask which covers a speculative failure. We were 
tempted perchance for a moment to believe that we were listen- 
ing to the master from whom Apostles were presently to draw 
their inspirations ; but, in truth, we have before us in Philo 
Judeus only a thoughtful, not insincere, but half-heathenized 
believer in the Revelation of Sinai, groping in a twilight which 
he has made darker by his Hellenic tastes, after a truth which 
was only to be disclosed in its fulness by another Revelation, the 
Revelation of Pentecost. 

This hesitation as to the capital question of the Personality of 
the Logos, would alone suffice to establish a fundamental dif- 
ference between the vacillating, tentative speculation of the 
Alexandrian, and the clear, compact, majestic doctrine concern- 
ing our Lord’s Pre-existent Godhead, which meets us under a 
somewhat similar phraseological form™ in the pages of the New 
Testament. When it is assumed that the Logos of St. John is 
but a reproduction of the Logos of Philo the Jew, this assump- 
tion overlooks fundamental discrepancies of thought, and rests. 
its case upon occasional coincidences of language’. For besides 
the contrast between the abstract ideal Logos of Philo, and the 
concrete Personal Logos of the fourth Evangelist, which has 
already been noticed, there are even deeper differences, which 
would have made it impossible that an Apostle should have sat 
in spirit as a pupil at the feet of the Alexandrian, or that he 
should have allowed himself to breathe the same general re- 
ligious atmosphere. Philo is everywhere too little alive to the 
presence and to the consequences of moral evil¥. The history 


Ὁ On the general question of the phraseological coincidences between Philo 
and the writers in the New Testament, see the passages quoted in Professor 
Mansel’s article ‘ Philosophy’ (Kitto’s Encycl.), already referred to. I could 
sincerely wish that I had had the advantage of reading that article before 
writing the text of these pages. 

Vv ‘ Gfrérer,’ Professor Jowett admits, ‘has exaggerated the resemblances 
between Philo and the New Testament, making them, I think, more real and 
less verbal than they are in fact.’ (Ep. of St. Paul, i. 454, note.) ‘Il est 
douteux,’ says M. E. Vacherot, ‘que Saint Jean, qui n’a jamais visité 
Alexandrie, ait connu les livres du philosophe juif.’ Histoire Critique de 
Vécole d’Alexandrie, i. p. 201. And the limited circulation of the writings of 
the theosophical Alexandrians would appear from the fact that Philo himself 
appears never to have read those of his master Aristobulus. Cf. Valkenaer, 
de Aristobulo, p. 95. 

w See the remarks of M. E. de Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 112. 


[ LECT. 


Contrasts between Philo and the Gospel. ὄρ 


of Israel, instead of displaying a long, earnest struggle between 
the Goodness of God and the wickedness of men, interests Philo 
only as a complex allegory, which, by a versatile exposition, 
may be made to illustrate various ontological problems. The 
priesthood, and the sacrificial system, instead of pointing to 
man’s profound need of pardon and expiation, are resolved by 
him into the symbols of certain cosmical facts or theosophic 
theories. Philo therefore scarcely hints at the Messiah, al- 
though he says much concerning Jewish expectations of a 
brighter future; he knows no means of reconciliation, of re- 
demption ; he sees not the need of them. According to Philo, 
salvation is to be worked out by a perpetual speculation upon 
the eternal order of things ; and asceticism is of value in assist- 
ing man to ascend into an ecstatic philosophical reverie. The 
profound opposition between such a view of man’s moral state, 
and that stern appeal to the humbling realities of human life 
which is inseparable from the teaching of Christ and His 
Apostles, would alone have made it improbable that the writers 
of the New Testament are under serious intellectual obligations 
to Philo. Unless the preaching which could rouse the con- 
science to a keen agonizing sense of guilt is in harmony with a 
lassitude which ignores the moral misery that is in the world ; 
unless the proclamation of an Atoning Victim crucified for the 
sins of men be reconcilable with an indifference to the existence 
of any true expiation for sin whatever; it will not be easy to 
believe that Philo is the real author of the creed of Christendom. 
And this moral discrepancy does but tally with a like doctrinal 
antagonism. According to Philo, the Divinity cannot touch that 
which is material : how can Philo then have been the teacher of 
an Apostle whose whole teaching expands the truth that the 
Word, Himself essentially Divine, was made flesh and dwelt 
among us? Philo’s real spiritual progeny must be sought else- 
where. Philo’s method of interpretation may have passed into 
the Church ; he is quoted by Clement and by Origen, often and 
respectfully. Yet Philo’s doctrine, it has been well observed, if 
naturally developed, would have led to Docetism rather than to 
Christianity* ; and we trace its influence in forms of theosophic 
Gnosticism, which only agree in substituting the wildest licence 
of the metaphysical fancy, for simple submission to that historical 
fact of the Incarnation of God, which is the basis of the Gospel. 
But if Philo was not St. John’s master, it is probable that his 


x Dorner, Person Christi, i. 57 (Einleit.). 


1 | 


ΜᾺ Real function of the Alexandrian theosophy. 


writings, or rather the general theosophic movement of which 
they are the most representative sample, may have supplied 
some contemporary heresies with their stock of metaphysical 
material, and in this way may have determined, by an indirect 
antagonism, the providential form of St. John’s doctrine. Nor 
can the general positive value of Philo’s labours be mistaken, if 
he-is viewed apart from the use that modern scepticism has 
attempted to make of particular speculations to which he gave 
such shape and impulse: In making a way for some leading 
currents of Greek thought into the heart of the Jewish Revela- 
tion, hitherto wellnigh altogether closed to it, Philo was not 
indeed teaching positive truth, but he was breaking down some 
intellectual barriers against its reception, in the most thoughtful 
portion of the human family. In Philo, Greek Philosophy 
almost stood at the door of the Catholic Church; but it was 
Greek Philosophy endeavouring to base itself, however precari- 
ously, upon the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Logos 
of Philo, though a shifting and incomplete speculation, may well 
have served as a guide to thoughtful minds from that region of 
unsettled enquiry that surrounds the Platonic doctrine of a 
Divine Reason, to the clear and strong faith which welcomes the 
full Gospel Revelation of the Word made Flesh. Philo’s Logos, 
while embodying elements foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures, is 
nevertheless in a direct line of descent from the Inspired doc- 
trine of the Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs; and it thus 
illustrates the comprehensive vigour of the Jewish Revelation, 
which could countenance and direct, if it could not absolutely 
satisfy, those fitful guesses at and gropings after truth which 
were current in Heathendom. If Philo could never have created 
the Christian Doctrine which has been so freely ascribed to him, 
he could do much, however unconsciously, to prepare the soil of 
Alexandrian thought for its reception; and from this point of 
view, his Logos must appear of considerably higher importance 
than the parallel speculations as to the Memra, the Shekinah, 
the doctrine of the hidden and the revealed God, which in that 
and later ages belonged to the tradition of Palestinian Judaism, 


y Compare Dorner, Person Christi, Einleit. p. 59, on the Adam Kadmon, 
and p. 60, on the Memra, Shekinah, and Metatron. ‘Zu der Idee einer 
Incarnation des wirklich Gottlichen aber haben es alle diese Theologumene 
insgesammt nie gebracht.? They only involve a parastatic appearance of 
God, are symbols of His Presence, and are altogether impersonal ; or if per- 
sonal (as the Metatron), they are clearly conceived of as created personalities. 
This helps to explain the fact that during the first three centuries εἴ main 

LECT. - 


Relevancy of the foregoing considerations. 71 


‘Providence,’ says the accurate Neander, ‘had so ordered it, that 
in the intellectual world in which Christianity made its first 
appearance, many ideas should be in circulation, which at least 
seemed to be closely related to it, and in which Christianity could 
find a point of connection with external thought, on which to 
base the doctrine of a God revealed in Christ%’ Of these ideas 
we may well believe that the most generally diffused and the 
most instrumental was the Logos of Alexandria, if not the exact 
Logos of Philo. 

It is possible that such considerations as some of the fore- 
going, when viewed relatively to the great and vital doctrine 
which is before us in these lectures, may be objected to on the 
score of being ‘fanciful.’ Nor am I insensible, my brethren, to 
the severity of such a condemnation when awarded by the 
practical intelligence of Englishmen. Still it is possible that 
such a criticism would betoken on the part of those who make 
it some lack of wise and generous thought. ‘Fanciful,’ after 
all, is a relative term; what is solid in one field of study may 
seem fanciful in another. Before we condemn a particular line 
of thought as ‘fanciful,’ we do well to enquire whether a pene- 
tration, a subtlety, a versatility, I might add, a spirituality of 
intelligence, greater than our own, might not convict the con- 
demnation itself of an opposite demerit, which need not be more 
particularly described: Especially in sacred literature the im- 
putation of fancifulness is a rash one; since a sacred subject- 
matter is not likely, ἃ prior, to be fairly amenable to the 
coarser tests and narrower views of a secular judgment. It 
may be that the review of those adumbrations of the doctrine 
of our Lord’s Divinity, in which we have been engaged, is rather 
calculated to reassure a believer than to convince a sceptic. 
Christ’s Divinity illuminates the Hebrew Scriptures, but to read 
them as a whole by this light we must already have recognised 
the truth from which it radiates. Yet it would be an error to 
suppose that the Old Testament has no relations of a more 
independent character to the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead. The 
Old Testament witnesses to the existence of a great national 
belief, the importance of which cannot be ignored by any man 
who would do justice to the history of human thought. And 
we proceed to ask whether that belief has any, and what, bearing 
upon the faith of Catholic Christendom as to the Person of her 
Lord. 


attacks on our Lord’s Godhead were of Jewish origin, Cf. Dorner, ubi sup. 
note 14. * Kirchen Geschichte, i. 3, p. 989. 


11 | 


72 lope in a Future, essential 


II. There is then one element, or condition of national life, 
with which no nation can dispense. A nation must have its eye 
upon a future, more or less defined, but fairly within the appa- 
rent scope of its grasp. Hope is the soul of moral vitality ; and 
any man, or society of men, who would live, in the moral sense 
of life, must be looking forward to something. You will scarcely 
suspect me, my brethren, of seeking to disparage the great prin- 
ciple of tradition ;—that principle to which the Christian Church 
owes her sacred volume itself, no less than her treasure of formu- 
lated doctrine, and the structural conditions and sacramental 
sources of her life ;—that principle to which each generation of 
human society is deeply and inevitably indebted for the accumu- 
lated social and political experiences of the generations before it. 
Precious indeed, to every wise man, to every association of true- 
hearted and generous men, must ever be the inheritance of the 
past. Yet what is the past without the future? What is 
memory when unaccompanied by hope? Look at the case of 
the single soul. Is it not certain that a life of high earnest pur- 
pose will die outright, if it is permitted to sink into the placid 
reverie of perpetual retrospect, if the man of action becomes the 
mere ‘laudator temporis acti?’ How is the force of moral life 
developed and strengthened? Is it not by successive conscious 
efforts to act and to suffer at the call of duty? Must not any 
moral life dwindle and fade away if it be not reaching forward to 
a standard higher, truer, purer, stronger than its own? Will 
not the struggles, the sacrifices, the ‘self-conquests even of a 
great character in bygone years, if they now occupy its whole 
field of vision, only serve to consummate its ruin? As it doat- 
ingly fondles them in memory, will it not be stiffened by conceit 
into a moral petrifaction, or consigned by sloth to the successive 
processes of moral decomposition? Has not the Author of our. 
life so bound up its deepest instincts and yearnings with His 
own eternity, that no blessings in the past would be blessings to 
us, if they were utterly unconnected with the future? So it is 
also in the case of a society. The greatest of all societies among 
men at this moment is the Church of Jesus Christ. Is she sus- 
tained only by the deeds and writings of her saints and martyrs 
in a distant past, or only by her reverent trustful sense of the 
Divine Presence which blesses her in the actual present? Does 
she not resolutely pierce the gloom of the future, and confidently 
reckon upon new struggles and triumphs on earth, and, beyond 
these, upon a home in Heaven, wherein she will enjoy rest and 
victory,—a rest that no trouble can disturb, a victory ἮΝ no 

LECT. 


to moral vigour and to national life. 78 


reverse can forfeit? Is not the same law familiar to us in this 
place, as it affects the well-being of a great educational institu- 
tion? Here in Oxford we feel that we cannot rest upon the 
varied efforts and the accumulated credit even of ten centuries. 
We too have hopes embarked in the years or in the centuries 
before us ; we have duties towards them. We differ, it may be, 
even radically, among ourselves as to the direction in which to 
look for our academical future. The hopes of some of us are 
the fears of others. This project would fain banish from our 
system whatever proclaims that God had really spoken, and that 
it is man’s duty and happiness gladly and submissively to wel- 
come His message; while that scheme would endeavour, if pos- 
sible, to fashion each one of our intellectual workmen more and 
more strictly after the type of a believing and fervent Christian. 
The practical difference is indeed profound ; but we are entirely 
agreed as to the general necessity for looking forward. On both 
sides it is understood that an institution which is not struggling 
upwards towards a higher future, must resign itself to the con- 
viction that it is already in its decadence, and must expect 
to die. 

Nor is it otherwise with that conglomeration of men which 
we call a nation, the product of race, or the product of circum- 
stances, the product in any case of a Providential Will, Which 
welds into a common whole, for the purposes of united action 
and of reciprocal influence, a larger or smaller number of human 
beings. A nation must have a future before it; a future which 
can rebuke its despondency and can direct its enthusiasm; a 
future for which it will prepare itself; a future which it will 
aspire to create or to control. Unless it would barter away the 
vigorous nerve of true patriotism for the feeble pedantry of a 
soulless archeology, a nation cannot fall back altogether upon 
the centuries which have flattered its ambition, or which have 
developed its material well-being. Something it must propose 
to itself as an object to be compassed in the coming time ; some- 
thing which is as yet beyond it. It will enlarge its frontier ; or 
it will develope its commercial resources ; or it will extend its 
schemes of colonization ; or it will erect its overgrown colonies 
into independent and friendly states; or it will bind the severed 
sections of a divided race into one gigantic nationality that shall 
awe, if it do not subdue, the nations around. Or- perchance its 
attention will be concentrated on the improvement of its social 
life, and on the details of its internal legislation. It will extend 
the range of civil privileges; it will broaden the basis of 


11 | 


74. A future necessary to the Chosen People. 


government ; it will provide additional encouragements to and 
safeguards for public morality ; it will steadily aim at bettering 
the condition of the classes who are forced, beyond others, to 
work and to suffer. Thankful it may well be to the Author of 
all goodness for the enjoyment of past blessings ; but the spirit of 
a true thankfulness is ever and very nearly allied to the energy 
of hope. Self-complacent a nation cannot be, unless it would 
perish. Woe indeed to the country which dares to assume that 
it has reached its zenith, and that it can achieve or attempt no 
more ! 

Now Israel as a nation was not withdrawn from the operation 
of this law, which makes the anticipation of a better future 
of such vital importance to the common life of a people. Israel 
indeed had been cradled in an atmosphere of physical and 
political miracle. Her great lawgiver could point to the 
event which gave her national existence as to an event unique 
in human history®. No subsequent vicissitudes would obliterate 
the memory of the story which Israel treasured in her inmost 
memory, the story of the stern Egyptian bondage followed 
by the triumphant Exodus. How retrospective throughout 
is the sacred literature of Israel! It is not enough that the 
great deliverance should be accurately chronicled; it must 
be expanded, applied, insisted on in each of its many bearings 
and aspects by the lawgiver who directed and who described 
it; it must be echoed on from age to age, in the stern 
expostulations of Prophets and in the plaintive or jubilant 
songs of Psalmists. Certainly the greater portion of the 
Old Testament is history. Israel was guided by the contents 
of her sacred books to live in much grateful reflection upon 
the past. Certainly, it was often her sin and her condemnation 
that she practically lost sight of all that had been done for 
her. Yet if ever it were permissible to forget the future, 
Israel, it should seem, might have forgotten it. She might 
have closed her eyes against the dangers which threatened 
her from beyond the Lebanon, from beyond the Eastern and 
the Southern desert, from beyond the Western sea, from 
within her own borders, from the streets and the palaces 
of her capital. She might have abandoned herself in an 
ecstasy of perpetuated triumph to the voices of her poets 
and to the rolls of her historians. But there was One Who 
had loved Israel as a child, and had called His infant people 


® Deut. iv. 34. 
[ LECT. 


Its character, not secular but religious. 75 


out of Egypt, and had endowed it with His Name and His 
Law, and had so fenced its life around by protective institutions, 
that, as the ages passed, neither strange manners nor hostile 
thought should avail to corrupt what He had so bountifully 
given to it. Was He forgetful to provide for and to direct 
that instinct of expectation, without which as a nation it 
could not live? Had He indeed not thus provided, Israel 
might have struggled with vain energy after ideals such as © 
were those of the nations around her. She might have spent 
herself, like the Tyrian or Sidonian merchant, for a large 
commerce ; she might have watched eagerly, and fiercely, like 
the Cilician pirate or like the wild sons of the desert, for 
the spoils of adjacent civilizations; she might have essayed 
to combine, after the Greek pattern, a discreet measure of 
sensuality with a great activity of the speculative intellect ; 
she might have fared as did the Babylonian, or the Persian, 
or the Roman; at least, she might have attempted the estab- 
lishment of a world-wide tyranny around the throne of a 
Hebrew Belshazzar or of a Hebrew Nero. Nor is her history 
altogether free from the disturbing influence of such ideals 
as were these; we do not forget the brigandage of the days 
of the Judges, or the imperial state and prowess of Solomon, 
or the commercial enterprise of Jehoshaphat, or the union 
of much intellectual activity with low moral effort which 
marked more than one of the Rabbinical schools. But the 
life and energy .of' the nation was not really embarked, at 
least in its best days, in the pursuit of these objects; their 
attractive influence was intermittent, transient, accidental. 
The expectation of Israel was steadily directed towards a 
future, the’ lustre of which would in some real sense more 
than eclipse her glorious past. That future was not sketched 
by the vain imaginings of popular aspirations; it was unveiled 
to the mind.of the people by a long series of authoritative 
announcements. These announcements did not merely point 
to the introduction of a new state of things; they centred 
very remarkably upon a coming Person. God Himself vouch- 
safed to satisfy the instinct of hope which sustained the national 
life of His own chosen people ; and Israel lived for the expected 
Messiah. 

But Israel, besides being a civil polity, was a theocracy ; 
she was not merely a nation, she was a Church. In Israel 
religion was not, as with the peoples of pagan antiquity, a 
mere attribute or function of the national life. Religion was 


II | 


76 Lsraelitic belief concerning Gop and sin, 


the very soul and substance of the life of Israel; Israel was 
a Church encased, embodied in a political constitution. Hence 
it was that the most truly national aspirations in Israel were her 
religious aspirations. Even the modern naturalist critics can- 
not fail to observe, as they read the Hebrew Scriptures, that 
the mind of Israel was governed by two dominant convictions, 
the like of which were unknown to any other ancient people. 
God was the first thought in the mind of Israel. The existence, 
the presence of One Supreme, Living, Personal Being, Who 
alone exists necessarily, and of Himself; Who sustains the 
life of all besides Himself; before Whom, all that is not 
Himself is but a shadow and vanity; from Whose sanctity 
there streams forth upon the conscience of man that moral 
law which is the light of human life; and in Whose mercy 
all men, especially the afflicted, the suffering, the poor, may, 
if they will, find a gracious and long-suffering Patron,—this 
was the substance of the first great conviction of the people 
of Israel. Dependent on that conviction was another. The — 
eye of Israel was not merely opened towards the heavens; it 
was alive to the facts of the moral human world. Israel was 
conscious of the presence and power of sin. The ‘healthy sen- 
suality,’ as Strauss has admiringly termed it >, which pervaded 
the whole fabric of life among the Greeks, had closed up the 
eye of that gifted race to a perception which was so familiar to 
the Hebrews. We may trace indeed throughout the best Greek 
poetry a vein of deep suppressed melancholy¢; but the secret 
of this subtle, of this inextinguishable sadness was unknown 


b See Luthardt, Apologetische Vortriige, νου]. vii. note 6. The expression 
occurs in Schubart’s Leben, ii. 461. Luthardt quotes a very characteristic 
passage from Goethe (vol. xxx. Winckelmann, Antikes Heidnisches, pp. 
10-13) to the same effect. ‘If the modern, at almost every reflection, casts 
himself into the Infinite, to return at last, if he can, to a limited point ; the 
ancients feel themselves at once, and without further wanderings, at ease only 
within the limits of this beautiful world. Here were they placed, to this 
were they called, here their activity has found scope, and their passions 
objects and nourishment.’ The ‘heathen mind,’ he says, produced ‘such a 
condition of human existence, a condition intended by nature,’ that ‘both in 
the moment of highest enjoyment and in that of deepest sacrifice, nay, of 
absolute ruin, we recognise the indestructibly healthy tone of their thought.’ 
Similarly in Strauss’ Leben Miarklin’s, 1851, p. 127, Marklin says, ‘I would 
with all my heart be a heathen, for here I find truth, nature, greatness.’ 

ς See the beautiful passage quoted from Lasaulx, Abhandlung iiber den 
Sinn der Cidipus-sage, p. 10, by Luthardt, ubi supra, note 7. Cf. also 
Doéllinger, Heid. und Jud. bk. v. pt. 1, § 2; Abp. Trench, Huls. Lectures, 
ed. 3, p. 305, also Comp. 1]. xvii. 446; Od. xi. 489, xvili. 130; Eurip. Hippol. 
190, Med. 1224, Fragm. No. 454, 808. 

[ LECT. 


points to a religious Deliverer. 77 


to the accomplished artists who gave to it an involuntary ex- 
pression, and who lavished their choicest resources upon the 
oft-repeated effort to veil it beneath the bright and graceful 
drapery of a versatile light-heartedness peculiarly their own. 
But the Jew knew that sin was the secret of human sorrow. 
He could not forget sin if he would; for before his eyes, the 
importunate existence and the destructive force of sin were 
inexorably pictured in the ritual. He witnessed daily sacrifices 
for sin; he witnessed the sacrifice of sacrifices which was 
offered on the Day of Atonement, and by which the ‘nation of 
religion,’ impersonated in its High Priest, solemnly laid its sins 
upon the sacrificial victim, and bore the blood of atonement into 
the Presence-chamber of God. Then the moral law sounded in 
his ears ; he knew that he had not obeyed it. If the Jew could 
not be sure that the blood of bulls and goats really effected his 
reconciliation with God; if his own prophets told him that 
moral obedience was more precious in. God’s sight than sacrificial 
oblations ; if the ritual, interpreted as it was by the Decalogue, 
created yearnings within him which it could not satisfy, and 
deepened a sense of pollution which of itself it could not relieve ; 
yet at least the Jew could not ignore sin, or think lightly of it, 
or essay to gild it over with the levities of raillery. He could 
not screen from his sight its native blackness, and justify it to 
himself by a philosophical theory which should represent it as 
inevitable, or as being something else than what it is. The 
ritual forced sin in upon his daily thoughts ; the ritual inflicted 
it upon his imagination as being a terrible and present fact ; 
and so it entered into and coloured his whole conception alike of 
national and of individual life. Thus was it that this sense of 
sin moulded all true Jewish hopes, all earnest Jewish antici- 
pations of the national future. A future which promised 
political victory or deliverance, but which offered no relief to 
the sense of sin, would have failed to meet the better aspirations, 
and to cheer the real heart of a people which, amid whatever 
unfaithfulness to its measure of light, yet had a true knowledge 
of God, and was keenly alive to the fact and to the effects of 
moral evil. And He Who, by His earlier revelations, had Him- 
self made.the moral needs of Israel so deep, and had bidden the 
hopes of Israel rise so high, vouchsafed to meet the one, and to 
offer a plenary satisfaction to the other, in the doctrine of an 
expected Messiah. 

It is then a shallow misapprehension which represents the 


Messianic belief as a sort of outlying prejudice or superstitions: geet 


II | 


f 


48 First Period of Messianic prophecy. 


incidental to the later thought of Israel, and to which Chris- 
tianity has attributed an exaggerated importance, that it may 
the better find a basis in Jewish history for the Person of its 
Founder. The Messianic belief was in truth interwoven with 
the deepest life of the people. The promises which formed and 
fed this belief are distributed along nearly the whole range of 
the Jewish annals; while the belief rests originally upon sacred 
traditions, which carry us up to the very cradle of the human 
family, although they are preserved in the sacred Hebrew Books. 
It is of importance to enquire whether this general Messianic 
belief included any definite convictions respecting the personal 
rank of the Being Who was its object. | 

In the gradual unfolding of the Messianic doctrine, three 
stages of development may be noted within the limits of the 
Hebrew Canon, and a fourth beyond it. (a) Of these the first 
appears to end with Moses. The Protevangelium contains a 
broad indeterminate prediction of a victory of humanity4 over 
the Evil Principle that had seduced man to his fall. The ‘Seed 
of the woman’ is to bruise the serpent’s head®, With the lapse 
of years this blessing, at first so general and indefinite, is nar- 
rowed down to something in store for the posterity of Shemf 
and subsequently for the descendants of Abraham’. In Abra- 
ham’s Seed all the families of the earth are to be blessed. 
Already within this bright but generally indefinite prospect of 
deliverance and blessing, we begin to discern the advent of a 
Personal Deliverer. St. Paul argues, in accordance with the 
Jewish interpretation, that ‘the Seed’ is here a personal Mes- 
siah»; the singular form of the word denoting His individu- 
ality, while its collective force suggests the representative 
character of His Human Nature. The characteristics of this 
personal Messiah emerge gradually in successive predictions, 
The dying Jacob looks forward to a Shiloh as One to Whom of 
right belongs the regal and legislative authority’, and to Whom 


ἃ So two of the Targums, which nevertheless refer the fulfilment of the 
promise to the days of the King Messiah. The singular form of the collective 
noun would here, as in Gen. xxii. 18, have been intended to suggest an indi- 
vidual descendant. 

€ Gen. iii. 15; cf. Rom. xvi. 20; Gal. iv.4; Heb. ii. 14; 1 St. John iii. 8. 

f Gen. ix. 26. 8 Ibid. xxii. 18. 

h Gal. iii. 16. See the Rabbinical authorities quoted by Wetstein, in 
loc. On the objection raised from the collective force of σπέρμα, cf. Bishop 
Ellicott, in loc. 

i Gen. xlix. 10. On the reading πρῶ see Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, 
p. 252. The sense given in the text is supported by Targum eer 

LECT. 


Second Period of M essianic prophecy. 79 


the obedient nations will be gathered. Balaam sings of the Star 
That will come out of Jacob and the Sceptre That will rise out 
of Israelk. This is something more than an anticipation of the 
reign of David: it manifestly points to the glory and power of 
a Higher Royalty. Moses! foretells a Prophet Who would in a 
later age be raised up from among the Israelites, like unto him- 
self. This Prophet accordingly was to be the Lawgiver, the 
Teacher, the Ruler, the Deliverer of Israel. If the prophetic 
order at large is included in this prediction™, it is only as being 
personified in the Last and the Greatest of the Prophets, in the 
One Prophet Who was to reveal perfectly the mind of God, and 
Whose words were to be implicitly obeyed. During this primary 
period we do not find explicit assertions of the Divinity of 
Messiah. But in that predicted victory over the Evil One; in 
that blessing which is to be shed on all the families of the earth ; 
in that rightful sway over the gathered peoples ; in the absolute 
and perfect teaching of that Prophet Who is to be like the great 
Lawgiver while yet He transcends him,—must we not trace 
a predicted destiny which reaches higher than the known limits 
of the highest human energy? Is not this early prophetic lan- 
guage only redeemed from the imputation of exaggeration or 
vagueness, by the point and justification which are secured to it 
through the more explicit disclosures of a succeeding age ? 

(8) The second stage of the Messianic doctrine centres in the 
reigns of David and Solomon. The form of the prophecy here 
as elsewhere is suggested by the period at which it is uttered. 
When mankind was limited to a single family, the Hope of the 
future had lain in the seed of the woman: the Patriarchal age 
had looked forward to a descendant of Abraham ; the Mosaic to 
a Prophet and a Legislator. In like manner the age of the 
Jewish monarchy in its bloom of youth and prowess, was bidden 
fix its eye upon an Ideal David Who was to be the King of the 
future of the world. Not that the colouring or form of the 
prophetic announcement lowered its scope to the level of a 
Jewish or of a human monarchy. The promise of a kingdom to 
David and to his house for ever, a promise on which, we know, 


Jerusalem Targum, the Syr. and Arab. versions, those of Aquila and Sym- 
machus, and substantially by the LXX. and Vulgate. 

k Num. xxiv. 17. 

1 Deut. xviii. 18, 19; see Hengstenberg’s Christologie des A. T. vol. i. 
p. 90; Acts ili. 22, vil. 37; St. Johni. 21, vi. 14, xii. 48, 49. 

m Cf. Deut. xviii. 15. 

n 2 Sam. vii. 16 (Ps. lxxxix. 36, 37; St. John xii. 34). ‘From David’s 
address to God, after receiving the message by Nathan, it is plain that David 


1 | 


80 Witness of the Messianic Psalms. 


the great Psalmist rested at the hour of his death®, could not be 
fulfilled by any mere continuation of his dynasty on the throne 
of Jerusalem. It implied, as both David and Solomon saw, 
some Superhuman Royalty. Of this Royalty the Messianic 
Psalms present us with a series of pictures, each of which 
illustrates a distinct aspect of its dignity, while all either imply 
or assert the Divinity of the King. In the second Psalm, for 
instance, Messiah is associated with the Lord of Israel as His 
Anointed SonP, while against the authority of Both the heathen 
nations are rising in rebelliond. Messiah’s inheritance is to in- 
clude all heathendomt; His Sonship is not merely theocratic or 
ethical, but Divine’. All who trust in Him are blessed ; all 
who incur His wrath must perish with a sharp and swift de- 
structiont. In the first recorded prayer of the Church of 
Christ, in St. Paul’s sermon at Antioch of Pisidia’, in the 
argument which opens the Epistle to the Hebrews*, this Psalm 
is quoted in such senses, that if we had no Rabbinical text- 
books at hand, we could not doubt the belief of the Jewish 
Church respecting ity. The forty-fifth Psalm is a picture of the 


understood the Son promised to be the Messiah in Whom his house was to 
be established for ever. But the words which seem most expressive of this 
are in this verse now rendered very unintelligibly “and is this the manner of 
man?’ whereas the words DINT nn NN literally signify “and this is (or 
must be) the law of the man, or of the Adam,” i.e. this promise must relate 
to the law, or ordinance, made by God to Adam concerning the Seed of the 
woman, the Man, or the Second Adam, as the Messiah is expressly called by 
St. Paul, τ Cor. xv. 45-47.—Kennicott, Remarks on the Old Testament, 
p- 115. He confirms this interpretation by comparing 1 Chron. xvii. 17 with 


Rom. v. 14. , 9.2 Sam. xxiii. 5. 
P Ps. ii. 7. 4 Ibid. ver. 2. 
τ Ibid. vers. 8, 9. S Ibid. ver. 7. 


t Ibid. ver. 12. See Dr. Pusey’s note on St. Jerome’s rendering of 
Ἢ 1pw2, Daniel the Prophet, p. 478, note 2. ‘It seems to me that St. Jerome 
preferred the rendering “the Son,” since he adopted it where he could 
explain it, [viz. in the brief commentary,|] but gave way to prejudice in 
rendering “‘adore purely.”’ Cf. also Replies to Essays and Reviews, p. 98. 
Also Delitzsch Psalmen, i. p. 15, note. ‘ Dass 12 den Artikel nicht vertragt, 
dient auch im Hebr. dfter die Indetermination ad amplificandum (8. Fleischer 
zu Zamachschari’s Gold. Halsbindern Anm. 2 S. 1 f.) indem sie durch die in 
ihr liegende Unbegrenztheit die Einbildungskraft zur Vergrosserung des so 
ausgedriickten Begriffs auffordert. Ein arab. Ausleger wiirde an u. St. erk- 
laren: “ Kiisset einen Sohn, und was fiir einen Sohn !”’’ 

ἃ Acts iv. 25, 26. V Ibid. xiii. 33. 

x Heb. i. 5; cf. Rom. i. 4. 

Υ The Chaldee Targum refers this Psalm to the Messiah. So the Bereshith 
Rabba. The interpretation was changed with a view to avoiding the pressure 
of the Christian arguments. ‘Our masters,’ says R. Solomon Jarchi, ‘ have 
expounded [this Psalm] of King Messiah ; but, according to the “ta and 

LECT. 


Divine Royalty of Messiah tn the Psalms. 81 


peaceful and glorious union of the King Messiah with His_ 
mystical bride, the Church of redeemed humanity. Messiah is 
introduced as a Divine King reigning among men. His form is 
of more than human beauty; His lips overflow with grace ; 
God has blessed Him for ever, and has anointed Him with the 
oil of gladness above His fellows. But Messiah is also directly 
addressed as God; He is seated upon an everlasting throne. 
Neither of these Psalms can be adapted without exegetical vio- 
lence to the circumstances of Solomon or of any other king of 
ancient Israel ; and the New Testament interprets the picture of 
the Royal Epithalamium, no less than that of the Royal triumph 
over the insurgent heathen, of the one true King Messiah@. In 
another Psalm the: character and extent of this Messianic 
Sovereignty are more distinctly pictured». Solomon, when at 
the height of his power, sketches a Superhuman King, .ruling 
an empire which in its character and in its compass altogether 
transcends his own. The extremest boundaries of the kingdom 
of Israel melt away before the gaze of the Psalmist. The new 
kingdom reaches ‘from sea to sea, and from the flood unto the 
world’s end¢.’ It reaches from each frontier of the Promised 
Land, to the remotest regions of the known world, in the 
opposite quarter. From the Mediterranean it extends to the 
ocean that washes the shores of Eastern Asia; from the 


for furnishing answer to the Minim [i.e. the Christian “heretics”], it is better 
to interpret it of David himself. Quoted by Pearson on art. 2, notes; 
Chandler, Defence of Christianity, p. 212; Pocock, Porta Mosis, note, p. 307. 
See too Dr. Pye Smith, Messiah, vol. i. p. 197. 

2 Dr. Pusey observes that of those who have endeavoured to evade the 
literal sense of the words addressed to King Messiah (ver. 6), ‘Thy throne, 
O God, is for ever and ever,’ ‘no one who thought he could so construct the 
sentence that the word Llohim need not designate the being addressed, 
doubted that Hlohim signified God; and no one who thought that he could 
make out for the word Hlohim any other meaning than that of ‘‘ God,” 
doubted that it designated the being addressed. A right instinct prevented 
each class from doing more violence to grammar or to idiom than he needed, 
in order to escape the truth which he disliked. If people thought that they 
might paraphrase “ Thy throne, O Judge” or ‘‘ Prince,” or “image of God,” 
or “who art as a God to Pharaoh,” they hesitated not to render with us “‘ Thy 
throne is for ever and ever.” If men think that they may assume such an 
idiom as “Thy throne of God” meaning ‘Thy Divine throne,” or “Thy 
throne is God” meaning ‘‘ Thy throne is the throne of God,” they doubt not 
that Elohim means purely and simply God. . . . If people could persuade 
themselves that the words were a parenthetic address to God, no one would 
hesitate to own their meaning to be “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and 
ever.”’ Daniel the Prophet, pp. 470, 471, and note 8. Rev.v.13. Cf. 
Delitzsch in loc. | 

@ Heb. i, 8. b Ps. Ixxii. ¢ Ibid. ver. 8. 


II | G 


82 Livine Royalty of Messiah in the Psalms. 


Euphrates to the utmost West. At the feet of its mighty 
Monarch, all who are most inaccessible to the arms or to the 
influence of Israel hasten to tender their voluntary submission. 
The wild sons of the desert4, the merchants of Tarshish in the 
then distant Spain’, the islanders of the Mediterranean‘, the 
Arab chiefss, the wealthy Nubians, are foremost in proffering 
their homage and fealty.. But all kings are at last to fall down 
in submission before the Ruler of the new kingdom ; all nations 
are to do Him servicei. His empire is to be co-extensive with 
the world : it is also to be co-enduring with time*, His empire 
is to be spiritual; it is to confer peace on the world, but by 
righteousness!. The King will Himself secure righteous judg- 
ment™, salvation®, deliverance®, redemption?, to His subjects. 
The needy, the afflicted, the friendless, will be the especial 
objects of His tender care9. His appearance in the world will 
be like the descent of ‘the rain upon the mown grass’; the true 
life of man seems to have been killed out, but it is yet capable 
of being restored by Him. He Himself, it is hinted, will be out 
of sight ; but His Name will endure for ever; His Name will 
‘ propagates :᾿ and men shall be blessed in Him', to the end of 
time. This King is immortal; He is also all-knowing and all- 
mighty. ‘Omniscience alone can hear the cry of every human 
heart ; Omnipotence alone can bring deliverance to every human 
sufferer.’ Look at one more representation of this Royalty, 
that to which our Lord Himself referred, in dealing with his 
Jewish adversaries*. David describes his Great Descendant 
Messiah as his ‘Lordy.’ Messiah is sitting on the right hand of 
Jehovah, as the partner of His dignity. Messiah reigns upon a 
throne which impiety alone could assign to any human monarch ; 
He is to reign until His enemies are made His footstool2; He is 
ruler now, even among His unsubdued opponents®. In the day 
of His power, His people offer themselves willingly to His 
service; they are clad not in earthly armour, but ‘in the 
beauties of holiness.’ Messiah is Priest as well as King¢; He 
is an everlasting Priest of that older order which had been 


ἃ Ps, lxxii. 9, Os. © Thid. ver. 10. f Ibid. 

& Ibid, h Tbid. xD. i Ibid. ver. 11. 

k Ibid. ver. 17. 1 [bid. ver. 3. τὰ Jbid. vers. 2, 4. 

» Ibid, vers. 4, 13. 9 Ibid. ver. 12. P Ibid. ver. 14. 

a Ibid. vers. 12, 13. t Ibid. ver. 6; cf. 2 Sam. xxiii. 4. 
® Ps. lxxii. 17. t Tbid. 

" Daniel the Prophet, p. 479. 

x St. Matt. xxii. 41-45; Ps.cx.1. 9 Ps, cx. 1. 2 Tbid. 

@ Ibid, ver. 2. Ὁ Tbid. ver. 3. ¢ Ibid. ver. 4. 


[ Lect. 


Third Period of Messianic prophecy. 83 


honoured by the father of the faithful. Who is this everlasting 
Priest, this resistless King, reigning thus amid His enemies 
and commanding the inmost hearts of His servants? He is 
David's Descendant ; the Pharisees knew that truth. But He 
is also David’s Lord. How could He be both, if He was merely 
human? The belief of Christendom can alone answer the 
question which our Lord addressed to the Pharisees. The Son 
of David is David’s Lord, because He is God; the Lord of 
David is David’s Son, because He is God Incarnate4, 

(y) These are but samples of that rich store of Messianic 
prophecy which belongs to the second or Davidie period, and 
much more of which has an important bearing on our present 
subject. The third period extends from the reign of Uzziah to 
the close of the Hebrew Canon in Malachi. Here Messianic 
prophecy reaches its climax: it expands into the fullest par- 
-ticularity of detail respecting Messiah’s Human life ; it mounts 
to the highest assertions of His Divinity. Isaiah is the richest 
mine of Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament®. Messiah, 
especially designated as ‘the Servant of God,’ is the central 
figure in the prophecies of Isaiah. Both in Isaiah and in 
Jeremiah, the titles of Messiah are often and pointedly ex- 
pressive of His true Humanity. He is the Fruit of the earth; 


4 On Ps, 110, see Pusey on Daniel, p. 466, sqq. Delitzsch Psalmen ii. 

630. 
i 6 With reference to the modern theory (Renan, Vie de Jésus, p. 37, &c. 
&ce.) of a‘later Isaiah,’ or ‘Great Unknown,’ living at the time of the 
Babylonish Captivity, and the assumed author of Is. xl.-Ixvi., it may suffice 
to refer to Professor Payne Smith’s valuable volume of University Sermons 
on the subject. When it is taken for granted on ἃ priori grounds that bond 
Jjide prediction of strictly future events is impossible, the Bible predictions must 
either be resolved into the far-sighted anticipations of genius, or, if their 
accuracy is too detailed to admit of this explanation, they must be treated as 
being only historical accounts of the events referred to, thrown with whatever 
design into the form of prophecy. The predictions respecting Cyrus in the 
latter part of Isaiah are too explicit to be reasonably regarded as the results 
of natural foresight ; hence the modern assumption of a ‘later Isaiah’ as their . 
real author. ‘Supposing this assumption,’ says Bishop Ollivant, ‘to be true, 
this later Isaiah was not only a deceiver, but also a witness to his own fraud ; 
for he constantly appeals to prophetic power as a test of truth, making it, 
and specifically the prediction respecting the deliverance of the Jews by 
Cyrus, an evidence of the foreknowledge of Jehovah, as distinguished from 
the nothingness of heathen idols. And yet we are to suppose that when this 
fraud was first palmed upon the Jewish nation, they were so simple as not to 
have perceived that out of his own mouth this false prophet was con- 
demned!’—Charge of Bishop of Llandaff, 1866, p. 99, note b. Comp. 
Delitzsch, Der Prophet Jesaia, εν 23. Smith’s Dict. Bible, art. ‘ Isaiah.’ 

f Isa. iv. 2. 


1 | | G2 


84 Devine Royalty of Messiah in the prophets. 


He is the Rod out of the stem of Jesse? ; He is the Branch or 
Sprout of David, the Zemach. He is called by God from His 
mother’s wombi; God has put His Spirit upon Him*. He is’ 
anointed to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captivel. He is a 
Prophet ; His work is greater than that of any prophet of - 
Israel. Not merely will He come as a Redeemer to them that 
turn from transgression in Jacob™, and to restore the preserved 
of Israel” ; He is also given as a Light to the Gentiles, as the 
Salvation of God unto the end of the earth®. Such is His 
Spiritual Power as Prophet and Legislator that He will write 
the law of the Lord, not upon tables of stone, but on the heart 
and conscience of the true IsraelP. In Zechariah as in David 
He is an enthroned Priest4, but it is the Kingly glory of 
Messiah which predominates throughout the prophetic repre- 
sentations of this period, and in which His Superhuman Nature 
is most distinctly suggested. According to Jeremiah, the Branch 
of Righteousness, who is to be raised up among the posterity of 
David, is a King who will reign and prosper and execute judg- 
ment and justice in the eartht. According to Isaiah, this. 
expected King, the Root of Jesse, ‘will stand for an ensign of 
the people; the Gentiles will seek Him; He will be the 
rallying-point of the world’s hopes, the true centre of its govern- 
ments’, Righteousness, equity, swift justice, strict faithfulness, 
will mark His administrationt; He will not be dependent like a 
human magistrate upon the evidence of His senses; He will not 
judge after the sight of His eyes, nor reprove after the hearing 
of His ears"; He will rely upon the infallibility of a perfect moral 
insight. Beneath the shadow of His throne, all that is by nature 
savage, proud, and cruel among the sons of men will learn the 
habits of tenderness, humility, and love*. ‘The wolf also shall 
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the 
kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; 
and a little child shall lead them.’ The reign of moral power, of 
spiritual graces, of innocence, of simplicity, will succeed to the 
reign of physical and brute force. The old sources of moral 
danger will become harmless through His protecting presence 
and blessing ; ‘The sucking child shall play on the hole of the 


& Ysa. xi. 1. h Jer, xxiii. 5; xxxili. 15. ἰ Isa, xlix. 1. 

k Tbid. xlii. 1. 1 Tbid. lxi. 1. τὰ bid. lix. 20. 

n Ibid. xlix. 6. ο Tbid. P Jer. xxxi. 31-35. 
a Zech. vi. 13. _ * Jer. xxili. 5. 5. Isa. xi. 10. 

t Ibid. vers. 4, 5. ἃ Ibid. ver. 3. x Ibid. vers. 6-8. 


[ LECT. 


Messiah ἐς to win the world by His sufferings. 85 


asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ 
deny ;’ and in the end ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge 
of the Lord, as the waters cover the 5682. Daniel is taught 
that at the ‘anointing of the Most Holy’—after a defined 
period—God will ‘finish the transgressions,’ and ‘make an end 
of sins,’ and ‘make reconciliation for iniquity,’ and ‘bring in 
everlasting righteousness@.’ Zechariah too especially points out 
the moral and spiritual characteristics of the reign of King 
Messiah. The founder of an eastern dynasty must ordinarily 
wade through blood and slaughter to the steps of his throne, 
and must maintain his authority by force. But the daughter of 
Jerusalem beholds her King coming to her, ‘Just and having 
salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass.’ ‘The chariots are cut 
off from Ephraini, and the horse from Jerusalem ; the King" 
‘speaks peace unto the heathen ;’ the ‘battle-bow is broken ;’ 
and yet His dominion extends ‘from sea to sea, and from the 
river to the ends of the earth».’ 

In harsh and utter contrast, as it seems, to this repre- 
sentation of Messiah as a Jewish King, the moral conqueror and 
ruler of the world, there is another representation of Him which 
belongs to the Davidic period as well as to that of Isaiah. 
Messiah had been typified in David persecuted by Saul and 
humbled by Absalom, no less truly than He had been typified in 
Solomon surrounded by all the glory of his imperial court. 
If Messiah reigns in the forty-fifth or in the seventy-second 
Psalms, He suffers, nay He is pre-eminent among the suffering, 
in the twenty-second. We might suppose that the suffering Just 
One who is described by David, reaches the climax of anguish ; 
but the portrait of an archetypal Sorrow has been even more 
minutely touched by the hand of Isaiah. In both writers, how- 
ever, the deepest humiliations and woes are confidently treated 
as the prelude to an assured victory. The Psalmist passes, from 
what is little less than an elaborate programme of the historical 
circumstances of the Crucifixion, to an announcement that by 
these unexampled sufferings the heathen will be converted, and 
all the kindreds of the Gentiles will be brought to adore the 
true Godt. The Prophet describes the Servant of God as 
‘despised and rejected of men4;’ His sorrows are viewed with 
general satisfaction ; they are accounted a just punishment for 


Υ Isa. xi. 8. 2 Tbid. ver. 9. a Dan. ix. 24. b Zech. ix. 9, 10. 
¢ Ps, xxii. 1-21, and 27. Phillips, on Ps. xxii., argues that the Messianic 
sense is ‘the true and only true’ sense of it. ἃ Ysa. lili. 3. 


1] 


86 Significance of the theory of a double Messiah. 


Lis own supposed crimes®. Yet in reality He bears our in- 
firmities, and carries our sorrows‘; His wounds are due to our 
transgressions ; His stripes have a healing virtue for uss. His 
sufferings and death are a trespass-offering) ; on Him is laid 
the iniquity of alli If in Isaiah the inner meaning of the 
tragedy is more fully insisted on, the picture itself is not less 
vivid than that of the Psalter. The suffering Servant stands 
before His judges; ‘His Visage is so marred more than any 
man, and His Form more than the sons of men ;’ like a lamb], 
innocent, defenceless, dumb, He is led forth to the slaughter ; 
‘He is cut off from the land of the living™’ Yet the Prophet 
pauses at His grave to note that He ‘shall see of the travail of 
His soul and shall be satisfied,’ that God ‘will divide Him a 
portion with the great,’ and that He will Himself ‘divide the spoil 
| with the strong.’ And all this is to follow ‘because He hath 
poured out His soul unto death®.’ His death is to be the con- 
dition of His victory; His death is the destined instrument 
whereby He will achieve His mediatorial reign of glory. 

Place yourselves, brethren, by an effort of intellectual sym- 
pathy in the position of the men who heard this language 
while its historical fulfilment, so familiar to us Christians, 
was as yet future. How self-contradictory must it have 
appeared to them, how inexplicable, how full of paradox! 
How strong must have been the temptation to anticipate 
that invention of a double Messiah, to which the later Jewish 
doctors had recourse, that they might escape the manifest 
eogency of the Christian argumentP. That our Lord should 
actually have submitted Himself to the laws and agencies 
of disgrace and discomfiture, and should have turned His 
deepest humiliation into the very weapon of His victory, is 
not the least among the evidences of His Divine power and 
mission. And the prophecy which so paradoxically dared to 
say that He would in such fashion both suffer and reign, 
assuredly and implicitly contained within itself another and 
a higher truth. Such majestic control over the ordinary con- 
ditions of failure betokened something more than an extraor- 


e 158. lili. 4. f Tbid. & Ibid. ver. «. 
h Tbid. ver. 12. i Ibid. ver. 6. k Tbid, 11]. 14. 
1 Thid. lili. 7. τὰ [bid. ver. 8. n bid, ver. 11. 


© Ibid. ver. 12. 

P See Dr. Hengstenberg’s elaborate account of the successive Jewish 
interpretations of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12, Christolog. vol. ii. pp. 310-319 
(Clarke’s trans.). Dr. Payne Smith on Isaiah, p. 172. 

[ Lect. 


Divinity ascribed in terms to the Messiah, 87 


dinary man, something not less than a distinctly Superhuman 
Personality. Taken in connection with the redemptive powers, 
the world-wide sway, the spiritual, heart-controlling teaching, 
so distinctly ascribed to Him, this prediction that the Christ 
would die, and would convert the whole world by death, pre- 
ares us for the most explicit statements of the prophets 
respecting His Person. It is no surprise to a mind which 
has dwelt steadily on the destiny which prophecy thus assigns 
to Messiah, that Isaiah and Zechariah should speak of Him 
as Divine. We will not lay stress upon the fact, that in 
Isaiah the Redeemer of Israel and of men is constantly asserted 
- to be the Creator4, Who by Himself will save His people’. 
Significant as such language is as to the bent of the Divine 
Mind, it is not properly Messianic. But in that great pro- 
phecy’, the full and true sense of which is so happily suggested 
to us by its place in the Church services for Christmas Day, 
the ‘Son’ who is given to Israel receives a fourfold Name. He 
is a Wonder-Counsellor, or Wonderful, above all earthly beings ; 
He possesses a Nature which man cannot fathom; and He 
thus shares and unfolds the Divine Mind‘. He is the Father 
of the Everlasting Age or of Eternity". He is the Prince 
of Peace. Above all, He is expressly named, the Mighty Godv. 


ᾳ Isa. xliv. 6; xlviii. 12, 13, 17. 

r Ibid. xlv. 21-24; Hos. i. 7; cf. Rom. xiv. 11; Phil. ii. τὸ; Isa, 
Xxxv. 4, xl. 3, τὸ. 8 Isa. ix. 6. 

tyyy xp. These two words must clearly be connected, although they 
do not stand in the relation of the status constructus. Gen. xvi. 12. yyV 
designated the attribute here concerned, nop the superhuman Possessor 
of it. u-sy~ix, Bp. Lowth’s Transl. of Isaiah in loc. 

vY This is the plain literal sense of the words. The habit of construing 
"12°58 as ‘strong hero, which was common to Gesenius and the older 
rationalists, has been abandoned by later writers, such as Hitzig and Knobel. - 
Hitzig observes that to render 11x5x by ‘strong hero’ is contrary to the 
usus loquendi. ‘x,’ he argues, ‘is always, even in such passages as 
Gen. xxxi. 29, to be rendered “God.” In all the passages which are 
quoted to prove that it means “‘princeps” “potens,” the forms are,’ he says, 
‘to be derived not from 5x, but from x, which properly means ‘‘ram,” 
then “‘leader,” or “‘ prince” of the flock of men.’ (See the quot. in Hengst. 
Christ. ii. p. 88, Clarke’s transl.) But while these later rationalists 
recognise the true meaning of the phrase, they endeavour to represent 
it as a mere name of Messiah, indicating nothing as to His possessing a 
Divine Nature. Hitzig contends that it is applied to Messiah ‘by way 
of exaggeration, in so far as He possesses divine qualities ;? and Knobel, 
that it belongs to Him as a hero, who in His wars with the Gentiles 
will shew that He possesses divine strength. But does the word ‘El’ 
admit of being applied to a merely human hero? ‘El,’ says Dr. Pusey, 


11 | 


88 Divinity of Messiah in the prophets. 


Conformably with this Jeremiah calls Him Jehovah Tsidkenu w, 
as Isaiah had called Him Emmanuel*. Micah speaks of His 
eternal pre-existenceY, as Isaiah had spoken of His endless 
reign%. Daniel predicts that His dominion is an everlasting 
dominion that shall not pass away*. Zechariah terms Him the 


‘the name of God, is nowhere used absolutely of any but God. Thé 
word is used once relatively, in its first appellative sense, the mighty of 
the nations (Ezek. xxxi. 11), in regard to Nebuchadnezzar. Also once 
in the plural (Ezek. xxxii. 21). It occurs absolutely in Hebrew 225 times, 
and in every place is used of God.’ Daniel, p. 483. Can we then doubt 
its true force in the present passage, especially when we compare Isa. x. 21, 
where 1112-58 is applied indisputably to the Most High God? Cf. Delitzsch, 
Jesaia, p. 155. 

w Jer. xxiii. 5, 6. This title is also applied by Jeremiah to Jerusalem 
in the Messianic age, in other words, to the Christian Church. Jer. xxxiii. 
15, 16. The reason is not merely to be found in the close fellowship 
of Christ with His Church as taught by St. Paul, (Eph. v. 23, 30); 
who even calls the Church, Christ (1 Cor. xii. 12). Jehovah Tsidkenu 
expresses the great fact of which our Lord is the author, and Christendom 
the result. That fact is the actual gift of God’s justifying, sanctifying 
righteousness to our weak sinful humanity. As applied to the Church 
then, the title draws attention to the reality of the gift; as applied to 
Christ, to the Person of Him through Whom it is given. It cannot be 
paralleled with names given to inanimate objects such as Jehovah Nissi, 
nor even with such personal names as Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, and the 
like. In these cases there is no ground for identifying the kings in 
question with the Exalted. Jehovah, or with Jehovah the Judge. The 
title before us, of itself, may not necessarily imply the Divinity of Christ ; 
it was indeed given in another form to Zedekiah. | Its real force, as applied 
to our Lord, is however shewn by other prophetic statements about Him, 
just as He is called Jesus, in a fundamentally distinct sense from that 
which the word bore in its earlier applications. But cf. Pye Smith, 
Messiah, i. 271, sqq. Hengst.. Christ. ii. 415, sqq. Reinke, Messianischen 
Weissagungen, iii. 510, sqq. Critici Sacri, vol. 4, p. 5638. Pearson on 
Creed, ii. 181, ed. 1833. 

x Isa. vii. 14; St. Matt. i. 23. Like Jehovah Tsidkenu, Emmanuel does 
really point to our Lord’s Divine Person, as Isa. ix. 6, would alone imply. 
That moby means a literal virgin, that the fulfilment of this prophecy . 
is to be sought for only in the birth of our Lord, and that this announcement 
of God’s mighty Salvation in the future, might well have satisfied Ahaz 
that the lesser help against the two kings in the immediate present would . 
not be wanting, are points well discussed by Hengstenberg, Christ. ii. 43-66. 
Reinke, Weissagung von der Jungfrau und von Immanuel, Miinster, 1848. 
Even if it were certain that the Name Emmanuel was in the first instance 
given to a child born in the days of Ahaz, it would still be true that 
‘then did God in the highest sense become with us, when He was seen 
upon earth,’ St. Chrys. in Isa. ch. vii. s. 6, quoted by Hengst. Christol. ubi 
supra. See too, Smith’s Dict. of Bible, art. ‘Isaiah,’ i. p. 879; Dr. Payne 
Smith, Proph. of Isaiah, pp. 21-27. 

y Mic. v. 2. See Chandler’s Defence of Christianity, p. 124; Mill on 
Mythical Interpr. p. 318. _# Isa. ix. 6. @ Dan. vii. 14. 

[ LECT. 


Attitude of the Naturalistic criticism. 89 


Fellow or Equal of the Lord of Hosts»; and refers in the 
clearest language to His Incarnation and Passion as being 
that of Jehovah Himself*. Haggai implies His Divinity 
by foretelling that His presence will make the glory of the 
second temple greater than the glory of the firstd. Malachi 
points to Him as the Angel of the Covenant, Jehovah, 
Whom Israel was seeking, and Who would suddenly come 
to His temple 9, | 

Read this language as a whole; read it by the light of the 
great doctrine which it attests, and which in turn illuminates 
it, the doctrine of a Messiah Divine as well as Human ;—all 
is natural, consistent, full of point and meaning. But divorce 
it from that doctrine in obedience to a foregone and arbitrary 
placitum of the negative criticism, to the effect that Jesus 
Christ shall be banished at any cost from the scroll of prophecy ; 
—how full of difficulties does such language forthwith become, 
how overstrained and exaggerated, how insipid and disappoint- 
ing! Doubtless it is possible to bid defiance alike to Jewish 
and to Christian interpreters, and to resolve upon seeing in 
the prophets only such a sense as may be consistent with 
the theoretical exigencies of Naturalism. It is possible to 
suggest that what looks like supernatural prediction is only 
a clever or chance farsightedness, and that expressions which 
literally anticipate a distant history are but the exuberance of 
poetry, which, from its very vagueness, happens to coincide 
with some feature, real or imagined, of the remote future. 
It is possible to avoid any frank acknowledgment of the im- 
posing spectacle presented by converging and consentient lines 


Ὁ Zech. xiii. 7. my does not mean only an associate of any kind, 
or aneighbour. ‘The word rendered “ My fellow” was revived by Zechariah 
from the language of the Pentateuch. It was used eleven times in Leviticus, 
and then was disused. There is no doubt then that the word, being 
revived out of Leviticus, is to be understood as in Leviticus; but in 
Leviticus it is used strictly of a fellow-man, one who is as_ himself. 
Lev. vi. 2, Xviii. 20, xix. 11, 15, 17, xxiv. 19, xxv. 14,15, 17... The name 
designates not one joined by friendship or covenant, or by any voluntary 
act, but one united indissolubly by common bonds of nature, which a 
man may violate, but cannot annihilate. ... When then this title is applied 
to the relation of an individual to God, it is clear that That Individual can 
be no mere man, but must be one united with God by an Unity of Being. 
The “Fellow” of the Lord is no other than He Who said in the Gospel, 
“T and My Father are One.”’ Pusey, Daniel, pp. 487, 488. Hengst. 
Christ. iv. pp. 108-112. 

¢ Zech. ii. 10-13, xil. 10; St. John xix. 34, 37; Rev. i. 7. 

4 Hag. ii. 7, 9. © Mal. iii. 1. 
1 


go Last Period of Messianic prophecy. 


of prophecy, and to refuse to consider the prophetic utterances, 
except in detail and one by one; as if forsooth Messianic: 
prophecy were an intellectual enemy whose forces must be 
divided by the criticism that would conquer it. It is possible, 
alas! even for accomplished scholarship so fretfully to carp 
at each instance of pure prediction in the Bible, to nibble 
away the beauty and dim the lustre of each leading utterance 
with such persevering industry, as at length to persuade itself 
that the predictive element in Scripture is insignificantly small, 
or even that it does not exist at all. That modern criticism 
of this temper should refuse to accept the prophetic witness 
to the Divinity of the Messiah, is more to be regretted than 
to be wondered at. And yet, if it were seriously supposed — 
that such criticism had succeeded in blotting out all reference 
to the Godhead of Christ from the pages of the Old Testament, 
we should still have to encounter-and to explain that massive 
testimony to the Messianic belief which lives on in the Rab- 
binical literature; since that literature, whatever be the date 
of particular existing treatises, contains traditions, neither few 
nor indistinct, of indisputable antiquity. In that literature 
nothing is plainer than that the ancient Jews believed the 
expected Messiah to be Divinef It cannot be pretended that 
this belief came from without, from the schools of Alexandria, 
or from the teaching of Zoroaster. It was notoriously based 
upon the language of the Prophets and Psalmists. And we 
of to-day, even with our improved but strictly mechanical 
apparatus of grammar and dictionary, can scarcely pretend to 
correct the early unprejudiced interpretation of men who read 
the Old Testament with at least as much instinctive insight 
into the meaning of its archaic language, and of its older 
forms of thought and of feeling, as an Englishman in this 
generation can command when he applies himself to the study 
of Shakespeare or of Milton. 

(δ) The last stage of the Messianic doctrine begins only after 
the close of the Hebrew Canon. Among the Jews of Alexandria, 
the hope of a Messiah seems to have fallen into the background. 
This may have been due to the larger attractions which doctrines 
such as those of the Sophia and the Logos would have possessed 
for Hellenized populations, or to a somewhat diminished interest 
in the future of Jewish nationality caused by long absence from 


f For the Rabbinical conception of the Person of Messiah, see Schéttgen, 
Hor. Hebr. vol. ii. de Messia, lib. i. c. 1, 566. 
[ LECT. 


Popular degradation of the Messianic [deal. οἵ 


Palestine, or to a cowardly unwillingness to avow startling reli- 
gious beliefs in the face of keen heathen critics. The two latter 
motives may explain the partial or total absence of Messianic 
allusions from the writings of Philo and Josephus ; the former 
will account for the significant silence of the Book of Wisdom. 
Among the peasantry, and in the schools of Palestine, the Mes- 
sianic doctrine lived on. The literary or learned form of the 
doctrine, being based on and renewed by the letter of Scripture, 
was higher and purer than the impaired and debased belief which 
gradually established itself among the masses of the people. The 
popular degradation of the doctrine may be traced to the later 
political circumstances of the Jews, acting upon the secular and 
materialized element in the national character. The Messianic 
belief, as has been shewn, had two aspects, corresponding re- 
spectively to the political and to the religious yearnings of the 
people of Israel. If such a faith was a relief to a personal or 
national sense of sin, it was also a relief to a sense of political 
disappointment or degradation. And keen consciousness of 
political failure became a dominant sentiment among the Jewish 
people during the centuries immediately preceding our Lord’s 
Incarnation. With some fitful glimpses of national life, as under 
the Asmoneans, the Jews of the Restoration passed from the 
yoke of one heathen tyranny to that of another. As in succes- 
sion they served the Persian monarchs, the Syrian Greeks, the 
Idumzan king, and the Roman magistrate, the Jewish people 
cast an eye more and more wistfully to the political hopes which 
might be extracted from their ancient and accepted Messianic 
belief. They learned to pass more and more lightly over the 
prophetic pictures of a Messiah robed in moral majesty, of a 
Messiah relieving the woes of the whole human family, of a 
Messiah suffering torture and shame in the cause of truth. They 
dwelt more and more eagerly upon the pictures of His world- 
wide conquest and imperial sway, and they construed those 
promises of coming triumph in the most earthly and secular 
sense; they looked for a Jewish Alexander or for a Jewish 
Cesar. The New Testament exhibits the popular form of the 
Messianic doctrine, as it lay in the minds of Galileans, of 
Samaritans, of the men of Jerusalem. It is plain how deeply, 
when our Lord appeared, the hope.of a Deliverer had sunk into 
the heart both of peasant and townsman; yet it is equally plain 
how earthly was the taint which had passed over the popular 
apprehension of this glorious hope; since its first full proclamation 
in ὋΝ days of the Prophets. Doubtless there were saints like 
II 


92 Christ claimed to be the Messiah of prophecy. 


the aged Simeon, whose eyes longed sore for the Divine Christ 
foretold in the great age of Hebrew prophecy. But generally 
speaking, the piety of the enslaved Jew had become little else 
than a wrong-headed patriotism. His religious expectations had 
been taken possession of by his civic passions, and were liable at 
any moment to be placed at the service of a purely political 
agitation. Israel as a theocracy was sacrificed in his thought to 
Israel as a state; and he was willing to follow any adventurer 
into the wilderness or across the Jordan, if only there was a 
remote prospect of bringing the Messianic predictions to bear 
against the hated soldiery and police of Rome. A religious 
.creed is always impoverished when it is degraded to serve 
political purposes ; and belief in the Divinity of Messiah na- 
turally waned and died away, when the highest functions 
attributed to Him were merely those of a successful general or 
of an able statesman. The Apostles themselves, at one time, 
looked mainly or only for a temporal prince; and the people 
who were willing to hail Jesus as King Messiah, and to conduct 
Him in royal pomp to the gates of the holy city, had so lost 
sight of the real eminence which Messiahship involved, that 
when He claimed to be God, they endeavoured to stone Him for 
blasphemy, and this claim of His was in point of fact the crime 
for which their leaders persecuted Him to deaths. 

And yet when Jesus Christ presented Himself to the Jewish 
people, He did not condescend to sanction the misbelief of the 
time, or to swerve from the tenor of the ancient revelation. He 
claimed to satisfy the national hopes of Israel by a prospect 
which would identify the future of Israel with that of the world. 
- He professed to answer to the full, unmutilated, spiritual ex- 
pectations of prophets and of righteous men. They had desired 
to see and had not seen. Him, to hear and had not heard Him. 
Long ages had passed, and the hope of Israel was still unfulfilled. 
Psalmists had turned back in accents wellnigh of despair to the 
great deliverance from the Egyptian bondage, when the Lord 
brake the heads of the dragons in the waters, and brought foun- 
tains out of the hard rock. Prophets had been assured that at 
last the vision of ages should ‘speak and not lie,’ and had been 
bidden ‘though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, 
it will not tarry.’ Each victory, each deliverance, prefigured 
Messiah’s work; each saint,-each hero, foreshadowed some 
separate ray of His personal glory; each disaster gave strength 


& Cf. Lect. IV. pp. 190, 191. ) 
[ LECT. 


flebrew Monothesm, a fowl to Messiah's Divinity. 93 


to the mighty cry for His intervention : He was the true soul of 
the history, as well as of the poetry and prophecy of Israel. And 
so much was demanded of Him, so superhuman were the propor- 
tions of His expected actions, that He would have disappointed 
Israel’s poetry and history no less than her prophecy, had He 
been merely one of the sons of men. Yet when at last in the 
fulness of time He came, that He might satisfy the desire of the 
nations, He was rejected by a stiff-necked generation, because 
He was true to the highest and brightest anticipations of His 
Advent. A Christ who had contented himself with the debased 
Messianic ideal of the Herodian period, might have precipitated 
an insurrection against the Roman rule, and might have ante- 
dated, after whatever intermediate struggles, the fall of Jeru- 
salem. Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Divine Messiah of 
David and of Isaiah; and therefore He died upon the cross, 
to achieve, not the political enfranchisement of Palestine, but 
the spiritual redemption of humanity. 

1. Permit me to repeat an observation which has already been 
hinted at. The several lines of teaching by which the Old Testa- 
ment leads up to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity, are at first 
sight apparently at issue with that primary truth of which the 
Jewish people and the Jewish Scriptures were the appointed 
guardians. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God h,’ 
That was the fundamental law of the Jewish belief and polity. 
How copious are the warnings against the surrounding idolatries 
in the Jewish Scripturesi! With what varied, what delicate, 
what incisive irony do the sacred writers lash the pretensions | 
of the most gorgeous idol-worships, while guarding the solitary 
Majesty and the unshared prerogatives of the God of Israel ΚΕ! ‘The 
specific distinction of Judaism,’ says Baur, ‘marking it off from 
all forms of heathen religious belief whatever, is its purer, more 
refined, and monotheistic conception of God. From the earliest 
antiquity downwards, this was the essential basis of the Old 
Testament religion!’ And yet this discriminating and funda- 
mental truth does but throw out into sharper outline and relief 
those suggestions of personal distinctions in the Godhead ; that 
personification of the Wisdom, if indeed the Wisdom be not a 


h Deut. vi. 4; cf. ibid. iv. 35, xxxii, 39; Ps. xcvi. 5; Isa. xlii. 8, xliii. 
10-13, xliv. 6, 8, xlv. 5,6, 18, 21, 22, xlviii. 11,12; Wisd. xii. 13; Ecclus. i. 8. 
i Deut. iv. 16-18. 
k Ps. exv. 4-8; Isa. xxxvii. 19, xliv. 9-20, xlvi. 5, sq.; Jer. ii. 27, 28, 
x. 3-6, 8-10, 14, 16; Hab. ii. 18, 19; Wisd. xiii. xiv. 
' ἢ Christenthum, p. 17. 
1 | 


94 Lhe Divinity of Messiah ἐς tmplied in the 


Person ; those visions in which a Divine Being is so closely 
identified with the Angel who represents Him ; those successive 
predictions of a Messiah personally distinct from Jehovah, yet 
also the Saviour of men, the Lord and Ruler of all, the Judge of 
the nations, Almighty, Everlasting, nay, One Whom prophecy 
designates as God. How was the Old Testament’ consistent 
with itself, how was it loyal to its leading purpose, to its very 
central and animating idea, unless it was in truth entrusted with 
a double charge ; unless, besides teaching explicitly the Creed of 
Sinai, it was designed to teach implicitly a fuller revelation, and 
to prepare men for the Creed of the Day of Pentecost? If indeed 
the Old Testament had been a semi-polytheistic literature ; if in 
Israel the Divine Unity had been only a philosophical specula- 
tion, shrouded from the popular eye by the various forms with 
which some.imaginative antiquity had peopled its national 
heaven ; if the line of demarcation between such angel ministers 
and guardians as we read of in Daniel and Zechariah, and the 
High and Holy One Who inhabiteth eternity, had been indistinct 
or uncertain ; if the Most Holy Name had been really lavished 
upon created beings with an indiscriminate profusion that de- 
prived it of its awful, of its incommunicable value ™,—then 
these intimations which we have been reviewing would have 
been less startling than they are. As it is, they receive promi- 
nence from the sharp, unrelieved antagonism in which they seem 
to stand to the main scope of the books which contain them. 
And thus they are a perpetual witness that the Jewish Revela- 
tion is not to be final; they irresistibly suggest a deeper truth 
which is to break forth from the pregnant simplicity of God’s 
earlier message to mankind ; they point, as we know, to the ᾿ 
Prologue of St. John’s Gospel and to the Council chamber of 
Niceea, in which the absolute Unity of the Supreme Being will 
be fully exhibited as harmonizing with the true Divinity of Him 
Who was thus announced in His distinct Personality to the 
Church of Israel. 

2. It may be urged that the Old Testament might conceivably 
have set forth the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead in other and 
more energetic terms than those which it actually employs. 
Even if this should be granted, let us carefully bear in mind 
that the witness of the Old Testament to this truth is not con- 
fined to the texts which expressly assert that Messiah should be 
Divine. The Human Life of Messiah, His supernatural birth, 


m Qn the senses of Elohim in the Old Testament, see Appendix, ie B. 
LECT. 


fulness of prophecy respecting [lis Manhood. ε 95 


His character, His death, His triumph, are predicted in the Old 
Testament with a minuteness which utterly defies the rationalistic 
insinuation, that the argument from prophecy in favour of 
Christ’s claims may after all be resolved into an adroit manipu- 
lation of sundry more or less irrelevant quotations. No amount 
of captious ingenuity will destroy the substantial fact that the 
leading features of our Lord’s Human manifestation were an- 
nounced to the world some centuries before He actually came 
among us. Do 1 say that to be the subject of prophecy is of 
itself a proof of Divinity? Certainly not. But at least when 
prophecy is so copious and elaborate, and yet withal so true to 
the facts of history which it predicts, its higher utterances, which 
lie beyond the verification of the human senses, acquire corre- 
sponding significance and credit. If the circumstances of Christ’s 
Human Life were actually chronicled by prophecy, prophecy is 
entitled to submissive attention when she proceeds to assert, in 
whatever terms, that the Christ Whom she has described is more 
than Man. 

It must be a robust and somewhat coarse scepticism which 
can treat those early glimpses into the laws of God’s inner 
being, those mysterious apparitions to Patriarchs and Lawgivers, 
those hypostatized representations of Divine Attributes, above 
all, that Divinity repeatedly and explicitly ascribed to the pre- 
dicted Restorer of Israel, only as illustrations of the exuberance 
of Hebrew imagination, only as redundant tropes and moods of 
Eastern poetry. For when the destructive critics have done their 
worst, we are still confronted by the fact of a considerable litera- 
ture, indisputably anterior to the age of Christianity, and fore- 
telling in explicit terms the coming of a Divine and Human 
Saviour. We cannot be insensible to the significance of this 
broad and patent fact. Those who in modern days have 
endeavoured to establish an absolute power over the conduct 
and lives of their fellow-men have found it necessary to spare 
no pains in one department of political effort. They have en- 
deavoured to ‘inspire,’ if they could not suppress, that powerful 
agency, which both for good and for evil moulds and informs 
popular thought. The control of the press from day to day is 
held in our times to be among the highest exercises of despotic 
power over a civilized community ; ; and yet the sternest despot- 
ism will in vain endeavour to recast in its own favour the verdict 
of history. History, as she points to the irrevocable and un- 
changing past, can be won neither by violence nor by blandish- 
μὲ τὲ to silence her condemnations, or to lavish her approvals, 
I 


96 Chrest, and the Sacred literature of Israel. 


or in any degree to unsay the evidence of her chronicles, that 
she may subserve the purpose and establish the claim of some | 
aspiring potentate. But He Who came to reign by love as by 
omnipotence, needed not to put force upon the thought and 
speech of His contemporaries, even could He have willed to do 
so®, For already the literature of fifteen centuries had been 
enlisted in His service ; and the annals and the hopes of an 
entire people, to say nothing of the yearnings and guesses of the 
world, had been moulded into one long anticipation of Himself. 
Even He could not create or change the past; but He could 
point to its unchanging voice as the herald of His own claims 
and destiny.. His language would have been folly on the lips ‘of 
the greatest of the sons of men, but it does no more than simple 
justice to the true mind and constant drift of the Old Testament. 
With His Hand upon the Jewish Canon, Jesus Christ could look 
opponents or disciples in the face, and bid them ‘Search the 
Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
are they which testify of Me.’ 


2 Lacordaire. 


[ Leer. 


LECTURE ΤΙ. 


OUR LORD’S WORK IN THE WORLD A WITNESS TO 
HIS DIVINITY. 


Whence hath This Man this Wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not This 
the carpenter's Son? is not His mother called Mary? and His brethren, 
James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And ‘His sisters, are they not 


all with us? Whence then hath This Man all these things ? 
St. Marv, xiii. 54-56. 


A SCEPTICAL prince once asked his chaplain to give him some 
clear evidence of the truth of Christianity, but to do so in a few 
words, because a king had not much time to spare for such mat- 
ters. The chaplain tersely replied, ‘The Jews, your majesty.’ 
The chaplain meant to say that the whole Jewish history was a 
witness to Christ. In the ages before the Incarnation Israel 
witnessed to His work and to His Person, by its Messianic be- 
lief, by its Scriptures, by its ritual, by its rabbinical schools. In 
the ages which have followed the Incarnation, Israel has wit- 
nessed to Him no less powerfully as the people of the dispersion. 
In all the continents, amid all the races of the world, we meet 
with the nation to which there clings an unexpiated, self-impre- 
cated guilt. This nation dwells among us and around us 
Englishmen ; it shares largely in our material prosperity ; its 
social and civil life are shaped by our national institutions ; it 
sends its representatives to our tribunals of justice and to the 
benches of our senate: yet its heart, its home, its future, are 
elsewhere. It still hopes for Him Whom we Christians have 
found ; it still witnesses, by its accumulating despair, to the 
truth of the creed which it so doggedly rejects. Our rapid sur- 
vey then of those anticipations of our Lord’s Divinity which are . 
furnished by the Old Testament, and by the literature more im- 
mediately dependent: on it, has left untouched a district of history 
fruitful in considerations which bear upon our subject. But it 
aa suffice to have hinted at the testimony which is thus 
ΠῚ Η 


98 Our Lord’s ‘plan’ of founding 


indirectly yielded by the later Judaism ; and we pass to-day to a 
topic which is in some sense continuous with that of our last. 
lecture. We have seen how the appearance of a Divine Person, 
as the Saviour of men, was anticipated by the Old Testament ; 
let us enquire how far Christ’s Divinity is attested by the phe- 
nomenon which we encounter in the formation and continuity of 
the Christian Church. 

I. When modern writers examine and discuss the proportions 
and character of our Lord’s ‘plan,’ a Christian believer may 
rightly feel that such a term can only be used in such a connec- 
tion with some mental caution. He may urge that in forming 
an estimate of strictly human action, we can distinguish between 
a plan and its realization; but that this distinction is obviously 
inapplicable to Him with Whom resolve means achievement, and 
Who completes His action, really if not visibly, when He simply 
wills to act. It might further be maintained, and with great 
truth, that the pretension to exhibit our Lord’s entire design in 
His Life and Death proceeds upon a misapprehension. It is far 
from being true that our Lord has really laid bare to the eyes of 
men the whole purpose of the Eternal Mind in respect of His 
Incarnation. Indeed nothing is plainer, or more upon the very 
face of the New Testament, than the limitations and reserve of 
His disclosures on this head. We see enough for faith and for 
practical purposes, but we see no more. Amid the glimpses 
which are offered us respecting the scope and range of the In- - 
carnation, the obvious shades off continually into mystery, the 
visible commingles with the unseen. We Christians know just 
enough to take the measure of our ignorance ; we feel ourselves 
hovering intellectually on the outskirts of a vast economy of 
mercy, the complete extent and the inner harmonies of which 
One Eye alone can survey. 

If however we have before us only a part of the plan which — 
our Lord meant to carry out by His Incarnation and Death, 
assuredly we do know something and that from His Own Lips. 
If it is true that success can never be really doubtful to Omni- 
potence, and that no period of suspense can be presumed to 
intervene between a resolve and its accomplishment in the 
Eternal Mind ; yet, on the other hand, it is a part of our Lord’s 
gracious condescension that He has, if we may so speak, entered 
into the lists of history. He has come among us as one of our- 
selves ; He has made Himself of no reputation, and has been 
found in fashion as a man. He has despoiled Himself of His | 
advantages ; He has actually stated what He proposed to in 

LECT. 


the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ or ‘of Gov. 99 


the world, and has thus submitted Himself to the verdict of 
man’s experience. His own Words are our warrant for compar- 
ing them with His Work ; and He has interposed the struggles 
of centuries between His Words and their fulfilment. He has so 
shrouded His Hand of might as at times to seem as if He would 
court at least the possibilities of failure. Putting aside then for 
the moment any recorded intimations of Christ’s Will in respect 
of other spheres of being, with all their mighty issues of life and 
death, let us enquire what it was that He purposed to effect 
within the province of human action and history. 

Now the answer to this question is simply, that He proclaimed 
Himself the Founder of a world-wide and imperishable Society. 
He did not propose to act powerfully upon the convictions and 
the characters of individual men, and then to leave to them, 
when: they believed and felt alike, the liberty of voluntarily 
forming themselves into an association, with a view to reciprocal 
sympathy and united action. From the first, the formation of a 
society was not less an essential feature of Christ’s plan, than was 
His redemptive action upon single souls. This society was not 
to be a school of thinkers, nor a self-associated company of enter- 
prising fellow-workers ; it was to be a Kingdom, the kingdom 
of heaven, or, as it is also called, the kingdom of God@, For 
ages indeed the Jewish theocracy had been a kingdom of God 
upon earth>. God was the one true King of ancient Israel. 
He was felt to be present in Israel as a Monarch living among 
His subjects. The temple was His palace; its sacrifices and 
ritual were the public acknowledgment of His present but in- 
visible Majesty. But the Jewish polity, considered as a system, 
was an external rather than an internal kingdom of God. 
Doubtless there were great saints in ancient Israel; doubtless 
Israel had prayers and hymns such as may be found in the 
Psalter, than which nothing more searching and more spiritual 
has been since produced in Christendom. Looking however to 
the popular working of the Jewish theocratic system, and to 
what is implied as to its character in Jeremiah’s prophecy of a 
profoundly spiritual kingdom which was to succeed it®, may we 


* βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν occurs thirty-two times in St. Matthew’s Gospel, to 
which it is peculiar ; βασιλεία τὸῦ Θεοῦ five times. The latter term occurs 
fifteen times in St. Mark, thirty-three times in St. Luke, twice in St. John, 
seven times in the Acts of the Apostles. In St. Matt. xiii. 43, xxvi. 29, we 
find 7 βασιλεία τοῦ Πατρός. Our Lord speaks of 7 βασιλεία 7 ἐμὴ three times, 
St. John xviii. 36. > St. Matt. xxi. 43. 

¢ Jer. xxx. 31-34, quoted in Heb. viii. 8-11. 
111 | | H 2 : 


100 Laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, as given 


not conclude that the Royalty of God was represented rather to 
the senses than to the heart and intelligence of at least the mass 
of His ancient subjects? Jesus Christ our Lord announced a 
new kingdom of God; and, by terming it the Kingdom of God, 
He implied that it would first fully deserve that sacred name, as 
corresponding with Daniel’s prophecy of a fifth empired Let — 
us moreover note, in passing, that when using the word ‘king- 
dom,’ our Lord did not announce a republic. Writers who carry 
into their interpretation of the Gospels ideas which have been 
gained from a study of the Platonic dialogues or of the recent 
history. of France, may permit themselves to describe our Lord 
as Founder of the Christian republic. And certainly St. Paul, 
when accommodating himself to political traditions and aspira- 
tions which still prevailed largely throughout the Roman world, 
represents and recommends the Church of Christ as the source 
and home of the highest moral and mental liberty, by speaking 
freely of our Christian ‘citizenship,’ and of our coming at baptism 
to the ‘city’ of the living Gode. Not that the Apostle would 
press the metaphor to the extent of implying that the new 
society was to be a spiritual democracy ; since he very earnestly 
taught that even the inmost thoughts of its members were to be 
ruled by their Invisible King® This indeed had been the claim 
of the Founder of the kingdom Himselfg; He willed to be King, — 
absolutely and without a rival, in the new society; and the 
nature and extent of His legislation plainly shews us in what 
sense He meant to reign. 

The original laws of the new kingdom are for the most part 
set forth by its Founder in His Sermon on the Mount. After a 
preliminary statement of the distinctive character which was to. 
mark the life and bearing of those who would fully correspond 
to His Mind and Will}, and a further sketch of the nature and 
depth of the influence which His subjects were to exert upon 
other meni, He proceeds to define the general relation of the 
new law which He is promulgating to the law that had preceded 
itk, The vital principle of His legislation, namely, that moral 
obedience shall be enforced, not merely in the performance of or 


ἃ Dan. vii. 9-15. 

6, Phil. iii. 20: ἡμῶν γὰρ τὸ πόλίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς ὑπάρχει. Cf. Acts xxili. 1: 
πεπολίτευμαι τῷ Θεῷ. Phil. i. 27: ἀξίως τοῦ εὐαγγελίου πολιτεύεσθε. Heb. 
xiii. 14. In Heb. xi. 10, xii. 22, πόλις apparently embraces the whole Church 
of Christ, visible and invisible; in Heb. xi. 16, xiii. 14, it is restricted to the 
latter. f 2 (or. x. 5. 8 St. Matt. xxiii. 8. 

bh Tbid. v. 1-12. i Tbid. vers, 13-16. k Tbid. vers. 17-20. 

[ Lect. 


an the Sermon on the Mount. 101 


in the abstinence from outward acts, but in the deepest and most 
secret springs of thought and motive, is traced in its application 
to certain specific prescriptions of the older Law!; while other 
ancient enactments are modified or set aside by the stricter 
purity τ, the genuine simplicity of motive and character ἃ, the 
entire unselfishness 9, and the superiority to personal prejudices 
and exclusiveness P which the New Lawgiver insisted on. The 
required life of the new kingdom is then exhibited in detail ; the 
duties of almsgiving4, of prayer’, and of fasting’, are successively 
enforced ; but the rectification of the ruling motive is chiefly 
insisted on as essential. In performing religious duties, God’s 
Will, and not any conventional standard of human opinion, is to 
be kept steadily before the eye of the soul. The Legislator 
insists upon the need of a single, supreme, unrivalled motive in 
thought and action, unless all is to be lost. The uncorruptible 
treasure must be in heaven ; the body of the moral life will only 
be full of light if ‘the eye is single ;’ no man can serve two 
masters*, The birds and the flowers suggest the lesson of trust 
in and devotion to the One Source and End of life; all will 
really be well with those who in very deed seek His kingdom 
and His righteousness". Charity in judgment of other men%, 
circumspection in communicating sacred truth Y, confidence and 
constancy in prayer’, perfect consideration for the wishes of 
others, yet also a determination to seek the paths of difficulty 
and sacrifice, rather than the broad easy ways trodden by the 
mass of mankind» ;—these features will mark the conduct of 
loyal subjects of the kingdom. They will beware too of false 
prophets, that is, of the movers of spiritual sedition, of teachers 
who are false to the truths upon which the kingdom is based and 
to the temper which is required of its real children. The false 
prophets will be known by their moral unfruitfulness°, rather 
than by any lack of popularity or success. Finally, obedience to 
the law of the kingdom is insisted on as the one condition of 
safety ; obedience4,—as distinct from professions of loyalty ; 
obedience,—which will be found to have really based a man’s 
life upon the immoveable rock at that solemn moment when all 
that stands upon the sand must utterly perish 5, 


1 St. Matt. v. 21-30. m Tbid. vers. 31, 32. n Ibid. vers. 33-37. 
© Tbid. vers. 38-42. P Ibid. vers. 43-47. a Ibid. vi, 1-4. 

τ Ibid. vers. 5-8. 5. Ibid. vers. 16-18. t Ibid. ver. 24. 

ἃ Thid. vers. 25-34. x Ibid. vii. 1-5. Y Ibid. ver. 6. 

z Ibid. vers. 7-11. @ Ibid. ver. 12. Ὁ Ibid. vers. 13, 14. 
¢ Ibid. vers. 15-20. ἃ Ibid. vers. 21-23. 6. Ibid. vers, 24-27. 


11 | 


102 The Kingdom both visible and invisible. 


Such a proclamation of the law of the kingdom as was the 
Sermon on the Mount, already implied that the kingdom would 
be at once visible and invisible. On the one hand certain out- | 
ward duties, such as the use of the Lord’s Prayer and fasting, 
are prescribed‘; on the other, the new law urgently pushes its 
claim of jurisdiction far beyond the range of material acts into 
the invisible world of thought and motive. The visibility of the 
_ kingdom lay already in the fact of its being a society of men, 
and not a society solely made up of incorporeal beings such as 
the angels. The King never professes that He will be satisfied 
with a measure of obedience which sloth or timidity might con- 
fine to the region of inoperative feelings and convictions; He 
insists with great emphasis upon the payment of homage to His 
Invisible Majesty, outwardly, and before the eyes of men. Not 
to confess Him before men is to break with Him for ever &; it 
is to forfeit His blessing and protection when these would most 
be needed. The consistent bearing, then, of His loyal subjects 
will bring the reality of His rule before the sight of men; but, 
besides this, He provides His realm with a visible government, 
deriving its authority from Himself, and entitled on this account 
to deferential and entire obedience on the part of His subjects. 
To the first members of this government His commission runs 
thus :—‘ He that receiveth you, receiveth Me,’ It is the King 
Who will Himself reign throughout all history on the thrones of 
His representatives; it is He Who, in their persons, will be 
acknowledged or rejected. In this way His empire will have an 
external and political side; nor is its visibility to be limited to 
its governmental organization. The form of prayer! which the 
King enjoins on His subjects, and the outward visible actions by 
which, according to His appointment, membership in His king- 
dom is to be begunj and maintained k, make the very life and 
movement of the new society, up to a certain point, visible. 
But undoubtedly the real strength of the kingdom, its deepest 
life, its truest action, are veiled from sight. At bottom it is to 
be a moral, not a material empire ; it is to be a realm not merely 
of bodies but of souls, of souls instinct with intelligence and love. 
Its seat of power will be the conscience of mankind. Not ‘here’ 
or ‘there’ in outward signs of establishment and supremacy, but 
in the free conformity of the thought and heart of its members 


f St. Matt. vi. 9-13, 16. 8 Ibid. x. 32; St. Luke xii. 8, 
h St. Matt. x. 40; comp. St. Luke x. 16. ὃ St. Matt. vi. 9-13. 
i Ibid. xxviii. 19; St. John iii. 5. 
K St. Luke xxii. 19; 1 Cor. xi. 24; St. John vi. 53.. 
| LECT. 


Parables of the Kingdom. 103 


to the Will of their Unseen Sovereign, shall its power be most 
clearly recognised. Not as an oppressive outward code, but as 
an inward buoyant exhilarating motive, will the King’s Law 
mould the life of His subjects. Thus the kingdom ‘of God will 
be found to be ‘within’ men!; it will be set up, not like an 
earthly empire by military conquest or by violent revolution, but 
noiselessly and ‘ not with observation™.’ It will be maintained by 
weapons more spiritual than the sword. ‘If,’ said the Monarch, 
‘My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, 
but now is My kingdom not from hence ἢ, 

The charge to the twelve Apostles exhibits the outward 
agency by which the kingdom would be established®°; and 
the discourse in the supper-room unveils yet more fully the. 
secret sources of its strength and the nature of its influenceP. 
But the ‘plan’ of its Founder with reference to its establish- 
ment in the world is perhaps most fully developed in that 
series of parables, which, from their common object and from 
their juxtaposition in St. Matthew’s Gospel, are es SE A 
termed Parables of the Kingdom. 

How various would be the attitudes of the human Hines 
towards the ‘word of the kingdom,’ that is, towards the 
authoritative announcement of its establishment upon the 
earth, is pointed out in the Parable of the Sower. The seed 
of truth would fall from His Hand throughout all time by 
the wayside, upon stony places, and among thorns, as well 
as upon the good ground4. It might be antecedently supposed 
that within the limits of the new kingdom none were to be 
looked for save the holy and the faithful. But the Parable 
of the Tares corrects this too idealistic anticipation ; the king- 
dom is to be a field in which until the final harvest the 
tares must grow side by side with the wheat'. The astonishing 
expansion of the kingdom throughout the world is illustrated 


1 St. Luke xvii. 21. m Tbid. ver. 20. » St. John xviii. 36. 

ο St. Matt. x. 5-42. P St. John xiv. xv. xvi. 

a St. Matt. xiii. 3-8, 190-23. 

r St. Matt. xiii. 24-30, 36-43. ‘In catholic& enim ecclesia, que non in 
solé Afric& sicut pars Donati, sed per omnes gentes, sicut promissa est, 
dilatatur atque diffunditur, in universo mundo, sicut dicit Apostolus, fruc- 
tificans et crescens, et boni sunt et mali.’ St. Aug. Ep. 208, n. 6. ‘Si 
boni sumus in ecclesié Christi, frumenta sumus ; si mali sumus in ecclesia 
Christi, palea sumus, tamen ab are& non recedimus. Tu qui vento tenta- 
tionis foris volasti, quid es? Triticum non tollit ventus ex area. Ex eo 
ergo, ubi es, agnosce quid es.” In Ps. lxx. (Vulg) Serm. ii, ἢ. 12. Civ. 
Dei, i. 35, and especially Retract. ii. 18. 
mt | 


108 0 Parables of the Kingdom. 


by ‘the grain of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of 
all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs.’ 
The principle and method of that expansion are to be observed 
in the action of ‘the leaven hid in the three measures of meal t.’ 
A secret invisible influence, a soul-attracting, soul-subduing 
enthusiasm for the King and His work, would presently pene- 
trate the dull, dense, dead mass of human society, and its 
hard heart and stagnant thought would expand, in virtue of 
this inward impulse, into a new life of light and love. Thus 
the kingdom is not merely represented as a mighty whole, 
of which each subject soul is a fractional part. It is exhibited 


as an attractive influence, acting energetically upon the inner: 


personal life of individuals. It is itself the great intellectual 
and moral prize of which each truth-seeking soul is in quest, 
and to obtain which all else may wisely and well be left behind. 
The kingdom is a treasure hid in a field¥, that is, in a line 
of thought and enquiry, or in a particular discipline and mode 


of life; and the wise man will gladly part with all that he» 


has to buy that field. Or the kingdom is like a merchant-man 
seeking ‘goodly pearlsv;’ he sells'all his possessions that he 
may buy the ‘one pearl of great price.’ Here it is hinted that 
entrance into the kingdom is a costly conquest and mastery 
of truth, of that one absolute and highest Truth, which is 
contrasted with the lower and relative truths current among 
men. The preciousness of membership in the kingdom is 
only to be completely realized by an unreserved submission 
to the law of sacrifice; the kingdom flashes forth in its 


full moral beauty before the eye of the soul, as the merchant- , 


man resigns his all in favour of the one priceless pearl. In 
these two parables, then, the individual soul is represented 
as seeking the kingdom; and it is suggested how tragic in 
many cases would be the incidents, how excessive the sacrifices, 
attendant upon ‘pressing into it.’ But a last parable is added 
in which the kingdom is pictured, not as a prize which can 
be seized by separate souls, but as a vast imperial system, 
as a world-wide home of all the races of mankind. Like 
a net* thrown into the Galilean lake, so would the kingdom 
extend its toils around entire tribes and nations of men; 
the vast struggling multitude would be drawn nearer and 
nearer to the eternal shore ; until at last the awful and final 


® St. Matt. xiii. 31, 32. t Ibid. ver. 33. ἃ Tbid. ver. 44. 
Υ Ibid. vers. 45, 46. x Ibid. vers. 47-50. 
[ LECT. 


Two characteristics of the ‘plan’ of Fesus Christ. 105 


separation would take place beneath the eye of Absolute Justice ; 
the good would be gathered into vessels, but the bad would 
be cast away. 

The proclamation of this kingdom was termed the Gospel, 
that is, the good news of God. It was good news for mankind, 
Jewish as well as Pagan, that a society was set up on earth 
wherein the human soul might rise to the height of its original 
destiny, might practically understand the blessedness and the 
awfulness of life, and might hold constant communion in a 
free, trustful, joyous, childlike spirit with the Author and 
the End of its existence. The ministerial work of our Lord 
was one long proclamation of this kingdom. He was per- 
petually defining its outline, or promulgating and codifying 
its laws, or instituting and explaining the channels of its 
organic and individual life, or gathering new subjects into 
it by His words of wisdom or by His deeds of power, or 
perfecting and refining the temper and cast of character which . 
was to distinguish them. When at length He had Himself 
overcome the sharpness of death, He opened this kingdom of 
heaven to all believers on the Day of Pentecost. His ministry 
had begun with the words, ‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at handy;’ He left the world, bidding His followers 
carry forward the frontier of His kingdom to the utmost limits 
of the human family, and promising them that His presence 
within it would be nothing less than co-enduring with time ἃ, 

Let us note more especially two features in the ‘plan’ of 
our Blessed Lord. 

(2) And, first, its originality. Need I say, brethren, that 
real originality is rare? In this place many of us spend our 
time very largely in imitating, recombining, reproducing existing 
thought. Conscious as we are that for ‘the most part we are 
only passing on under a new form that which in its substance 
has come to us from others, we honestly say so; yet it may 
chance to us at some time to imagine that in our brain an 
idea or a design has taken shape, which is originally and 
in truth our own creation— 


‘ Libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps; 
Non aliena meo pressi pede ».’. 


Those few, rapid, decisive moments in which genius consciously 
enjoys the exhilarating sense of wielding creative power, may 


y St. Matt. iv. 17. z Ibid. xxviii. 19; St. Luke xxiv. 47; Actsi. 8. 
ἃ St. Matt. xxviii. 20. b Hor. Ep. i. rg. 21. 
111 | | 


106 6‘ Originality’ of our Lord’s ‘plan, ase 


naturally be treasured in memory; and yet, even in these, 
how hard must it be to verify the assumed fact of an absolute 
originality! We of this day find the atmosphere of human 
thought, even more than the surface of the earth, preoccupied 
and thronged with the results of man’s activity in times past 
and present. In proportion to our consciousness of our real 
obligations to this general stock of mental wealth, must we 


not hesitate to presume that any one idea, the immediate origin © 


of which we cannot trace, is in reality our own? Suppose 
that in this or that instance we do believe ourselves, in perfect 
good faith, to have produced an idea which is really entitled 
to the merit of originality. May it not be, that if at the right 
moment we could have examined the intellectual air around 
us with a sufficiently powerful microscope, we should have 
detected the germ of our idea ‘floating in upon our personal 


thought from without¢?’ We only imagine ourselves to have. 


created the idea because, at the time of our inhaling it, we 
were not conscious of doing so. The idea perhaps was suggested 
indirectly ; it came to us along with some other idea upon 
which our attention was mainly fixed; it came to us so dis- 
guised or so undeveloped, that we cannot recognise it, so as 
to trace the history of its growth. It came to us during the 
course of a casual conversation ; or from a book the very name 
of which we have forgotten; and our relationship towards it 
has been after all that of a nurse, not that of a parent. We 
have protected it, cherished it, warmed it, and at length 
it has grown within the chambers of our mind, until we have 
recognised its value and led it forth into the sunlight, shaping 
it, colouring it, expressing it after a manner strictly our own, 
and believing in good faith that because we have so entirely 
determined its form, we are the creators of its substance ἃ, 
At any rate, my brethren, genius herself has not been slow to 
confess how difficult it is to say that any one of her triumphs 
is certainly due to a true originality. In one of his later 
recorded conversations Goethe was endeavouring to decide 
what are the real obligations of genius to the influences which 
inevitably affect it. ‘Much,’ said he, ‘is talked about originality ; 
but what does originality mean? We are no sooner born than 
the world around begins to act upon us; its action lasts to 
the end of our lives and enters into everything. All that we 


ο This illustration was suggested to me, some years ago, by a well-known 
Oxford tutor. It is developed, with his usual force, by Félix, J ésus-Christ 
p. 128. . ἃ Bautain, Etude sur l’art de parler en Bae 

LECT. 


guaranteed by the tsolation of Flis Early Life. τοῦ 


can truly call our own is our energy, our vigour, our will. If 


J,’ he continued, ‘could enumerate all that I really owe to 
the great men who have preceded me, and to those of my 
own day, it would be seen that very little is really my own. 
It is a point of capital importance to observe at what time of 
life the influence of a great character is brought to bear on us. 
Lessing, Winkelmann, and Kant, were older than I, and it 
has been of the greatest consequence to me that the two first 
powerfully influenced my youth and the last my old age®.’ 
On such a subject, Goethe may be deemed a high authority, 
and he certainly was not likely to do an injustice to genius, 
or to be guilty of a false humility when speaking of himself. 

But our Lord’s design to establish upon the earth a kingdom 
of souls was an original design. Remark, as bearing upon this 
originality, our Lord’s isolation in His early life. His social 
obscurity is, in the eyes of thoughtful men, the safeguard and 
guarantee of His originality. It is not seriously pretended, 
on any side, that Jesus Christ was enriched with one single 
ray of His thought from Athens, from Alexandria, from the 
mystics of the Ganges or of the Indus, from the disciples of 
Zoroaster or of Confucius. The centurion whose servant He 
healed, the Greeks whom He met at the instance of St. Philip, 
the Syro-phcenician woman, the judge who condemned and the 
soldiers who crucified Him, are the few Gentiles with whom ἢ 
He is recorded to have had dealings during His earthly life. 
But was our Lord equally isolated from the world of Jewish 
speculation? M. Renan, indeed, impatient at the spectacle of 
an unrivalled originality, suggests, not without some hesitation, 
that Hillel was the real teacher of Jesusf. But Dr. Schenkel 

€ Conversations de Goethe, trad. Delerot, tom. ii. p. 342, quoted in 
the Rev. des Deux Mondes, 15 Oct. 1865. 

f ‘Hillel fut le vrai maitre de Jésus, s’il est permis de parler de maitre 
quand il s’agit d’une si haute originalité.? Vie de Jésus, p. 35. As an 
instance of our Lord’s real independence of Hillel, a single example may 
suffice. A recent writer on ‘the Talmud’ gives the following story. ‘One 
day a heathen went to Shammai, the head of the rival academy, and. asked. 
him mockingly to convert him to the law while he stood on one leg. The 
irate master turned him from the door. He then went to Hillel, who gave 
him that reply—since so widely propagated—‘Do not unto another what 
thou wouldest not have another do unto thee. This is the whole law: 
the rest is mere commentary.’ Quarterly Review, Oct. 1867, p. 441. art. 
‘The Talmud.’ Or, as Hillel’s words are rendered by Lightfoot: ‘Quod 
tibi ipsi odiosum est, proximo ne feceris: nam hee est tota lex.’ Hor. 
Hebr. in Matt. p. 129. The writer in the Quarterly Review appears to 
assume the identity of Hillel’s saying with the precept of our Blessed Lord. 
St. vii, 12; St. Luke vi. 31. Yet in truth how wide is the interval 
III 


108 §©6‘ Originality’ of our Lord’s ‘ plan, as 


will tell us that this suggestion rests on no historical basis 
whatever &, while we may remark in passing that it is at issue 
with a theory which you would not care to notice at length, 
but which M. Renan cherishes with much fondness, and which 
represents our Lord’s ‘tone of thought’ as a psychological 
result of the scenery of north-eastern Palestine», The kindred 
assumption that when making His yearly visits to Jerusalem 
for the Feast of the Passover, or at other times, Jesus must 
have become the pupil of some of the leading Jewish doctors 
of the day, is altogether gratuitous. Once indeed, when He 
was twelve years old, He was found in a synagogue, hard by 
the temple, in close intellectual contact with aged teachers 
of the Law. But all who hear Him, even then, in His early 
Boyhood, are astonished at His understanding and answers ; 
and the narrative of the Evangelist implies that the occurrence 
was not repeated. Moreover there was no teaching in Judea 
at that era, which had not, in the true sense of the expression, 
a sectarian colouring. But what is there in the doctrine or 
in the character of Jesus that connects Him with a Pharisee 
or a Sadducee, or an Herodian, or an Essene type of education ? 
Is it not significant that, as Schleiermacher remarks, ‘of all 
the sects then in vogue none ever claimed Jesus as representing 
it, none branded Him with the reproach of apostasy from its 
tenetsi?’? Even if we lend an ear to the precarious conjecture 
that He may have attended some elementary school at Nazareth, 


between the merely negative rule of the Jewish President, (which had already 
been given in Tobit iv. 15.) and the positive precept—iéoa ἂν θέλητε ἵνα 
ποιῶσιν ὑμῖν of ἄνθρωποι, οὕτω καὶ ὑμεῖς ποιεῖτε avtots—of the Divine Master. 
On Gibbon’s citation from Isocrates of a precept equivalent to Hillel’s, 
see Archbishop Trench, Huls. Lect. p. 157. 

g ‘Ganz unbewiesen ist es,’ Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 39, note. 
When however Dr. Schenkel himself says, ‘ Den Einblick, den Er [sc. Jesus] 
in das Wesen und Treiben der religidsen Richtungen und Parteiungen 
seines Volkes in so hohem Masse befass, hat Er aus persénlicher Wahrneh- 
mung und unmittelbarem Verkehr mit den Hiuptern und Vertretern der 
verschiedenen Parteistandpunkte gewonnen’ (ibid.), where is the justification 
of this assertion, except in the Humanitarian and Naturalistic theory of the 
writer, which makes some such assumption necessary ? 

h Vie de Jésus, p. 64: ‘Une nature ravissante contribuait ἃ former 
cet esprit.’ Then follows a description of the flowers, the animals, the 
insects, and the mountains (p. 65), the farms, the fruit-gardens, and the 
vintage (p. 66), of Northern Galilee. M. Renan concludes, ‘cette vie 
- contente et facilement satisfaite . . se spiritualisait en réves éthérés, en 
une sorte de mysticisme poétique confondant le ciel et la terre... . Toute 
Vhistoire du Christianisme naissant est devenue de la sorte une délicieuse 
pastorale.’ p. 67. i Leben Jesu, vorl. xvi. 

[ LECT. 


5 ae eae πων 


guaranteed by the rsolation of Hrs Early Life. 109 


it is plain that the people believed Him to have gone through 


no formal course of theological training. ‘How knoweth This 


Man letters, having never learned‘ ?’ was a question which 
betrayed the popular surprise created by a Teacher Who spoke 
with the highest authority, and Who yet had never sat at 
the feet of an accredited doctor. It was the homage of public 
enthusiasm which honoured Him with the title of Rabbi; 
since this title did not then imply that one who bore it had 
been qualified by any intellectual exercises for an official teaching 
position. Isolated, as it seemed, obscure, uncultivated, illiterate, 
the Son of Mary did not concern Himself to struggle against 
or to reverse what man would deem the crushing disadvantages 
of His lot. He did not, like philosophers of antiquity, or like 
the active spirits of the middle ages, spend His Life in perpetual 
transit between one lecturer of reputation and another, between 
this and that focus of earnest and progressive thought. He 
was not a Goethe, continually enriching and refining his con- 
ceptions by contact with a long succession of intellectual friends, 
reaching from Lavater to Eckermann. Still less did He, 
during His early Manhood, live in any such atmosphere as 
that of this place, where interpenetrating all our differences 
of age and occupation, and even of conviction, there is the 
magnificent inheritance of a common fund of thought, to which, 
whether we know it or not, we are all constantly and inevitably 


debtors. He mingled neither with great thinkers who could - 


mould educated opinion, nor with men of gentle blood who 
could give its tone to society; He passed those thirty years 
as an under-workman in a carpenter’s shop; He lived in what 
might have seemed the depths of mental solitude and of social 
obscurity ; and then He went forth, not to foment a political 
revolution, nor yet to found a local school of evanescent sen- 
timent, but to proclaim an enduring and world-wide Kingdom 


of souls, based upon the culture of a common moral character, 
and upon intellectual submission to a common creed. 


Christ’s isolation, then, is the guarantee of His originality ; 
yet had He lived as much in public as He lived ~in obscurity, 
where, let me ask, is the kingdom of heaven anticipated as a 
practical project in the ancient world? What, beyond the inter- 
change of thought on moral subjects, has the kingdom proclaimed 
by our Lord in common with the philosophical schools or coteries 
which grouped themselves around Socrates and other teachers 


k St. John vii. 15. 
m1 | | 


t10 Who could have suggested Christ’s ‘ plan’? 


of classical Greece!? These schools, indeed, differed from the 
kingdom of heaven, not merely in their lack of any pretensions 
to supernatural aims or powers, but yet more, in that they only 
existed for the sake of a temporary convenience, and that their 
members were bound to each other by no necessary ties ™. 
Again, what was there in any of the sects of Judaism that could 
have suggested such a conception as the kingdom of heaven ? 
Each and all they differ from it, I will not say in organization 
and structure, but in range and compass, in life and action, in 
spirit and aim. Or was the kingdom of heaven even traced in 
outline by the vague yearnings and aspirations after a better 
time, which entered so mysteriously into the popular thought of 
the heathen populations in the Augustan age®? Certainly it was 
an answer, complete yet unexpected, to these aspirations. They 
did not originate it; they could not have originated it; they 
primarily pointed to a material rather than to a moral Utopia, 
to an idea of improvement which did not enter into the plan of 
the Founder of the new kingdom. But you ask if the announce- 
ment of the kingdom of heaven by our Lord was not really a 
continuation of the announcement of the kingdom of heaven by 


1 Mr. Lecky makes an observation upon the originality of our Lord’s moral 
teaching, considered generally, which is well worthy of attention. Rational- 
ism in Europe, i. p. 338. ‘Nothing too, can, as I conceive, be more er- 
roneous or superficial than the reasonings of those who maintain that 
the moral element in Christianity has in it nothing distinctive or peculiar. 
The method of this school, of which Bolingbroke may be regarded as the 
type, is to collect from the writings of different heathen writers, certain 
isolated passages embodying precepts that were inculcated by Christianity ; 
and when the collection had become very large the task was supposed to be 
accomplished. But the true originality of a system of moral teaching depends 
not so much upon the elements of which it is composed, as upon the manner 
in which they are fused into a symmetrical whole, upon the proportionate 
value that is attached to different qualities, or, to state the same thing by a ἡ 
single word, upon the type of character that is formed. Now it is quite 
certain that the Christian type differs, not only in degree, but in kind from 
the Pagan one.’ This general observation might legitimately include the 
vital differences which sever all merely human schemes of moral association 
and co-operation from that of the Founder of the Christian Church. See also 
Tulloch on The Christ of the Gospels, p. 190. 

m This point is well stated in Ecce Homo, p. 91, sqq. The writer observes 
that if Socrates were to appear at the present day, he would form no society, 
as the invention of printing would have rendered it unnecessary.‘ But the 
formation of an organized society was of the very essence of the work of 
Christ. I heartily rejoice to recognise the fulness with which this vital ᾿ 
truth is set forth by one from whom serious Churchmen must feel themselves 
to be separated by some deep differences of belief and principle. 

2 Virgil, Ecl. iv., An. vi. 793, and Suetonius, Vespasianus, iv. 5. 

LECT. - 


-- 


Its ‘ originality’ substantial, not verbal. 111 


St. John the Baptist? You might go further, and enquire, whether 
this proclamation of the kingdom of heaven is not to be traced 
up to the prophecy of Daniel respecting a fifth empire? For the 
present of course I waive the question which an Apostle ὁ would 
have raised, as to whether the Spirit That spoke in St. John and 


in Daniel was not the Spirit of the Christ Himself. But let us 


enquire whether Daniel or St.John do anticipate our Lord’s 
plan in such a sense as to rob it of its immediate originality. 
The Baptist and the prophet foretell the kingdom of heaven. 


Be it so. But a name is one thing, and the vivid complete 


grasp of an idea is another. We are accustomed.to distinguish 


with some wholesome severity between originality of phrase and 
originality of thought. An intrinsic poverty of thought may at 
times succeed in formulating an original expression; while a 
true originality will often, nay generally, welcome a time- 
honoured and conventional phraseology, if it can thus secure 
currency and acceptance for the truth which it has brought to 
light and which it desires to set forth?. The originality of our 
Lord’s plan lay not in its name, but in its substance. When 
St. John said that the kingdom of heaven was at hand 4, when 
Daniel represented it as a world-wide and imperishable empire, 
neither prophet nor Baptist had really anticipated the idea; one 
furnished the name of a coming system, the other a measure of 


its greatness. But what was the new institution to be in itself ; 


what were to be its controlling laws and principles; what the 


© x St. Peter i. 11. 

P Pascal, Pensées, art. vii. 9. (ed. Havet. p. 123) ‘Qu’on ne dise pas 
que je n’ai rien dit de nouveau; la disposition des mati¢res est nouvelle. 
Quand on joue ἃ la paume, c’est une méme balle dont on joue l’un et lautre; 
mais l’un la place mieux. J’aimerais autant qu’on me dit que je me 
suis servi des mots anciens. Et comme si les mémes pensées ne formaient 
pas un autre corps de discours par une disposition différente, aussi bien que 
les mémes mots forment d’autres pensées par leur différente disposition.’ 

4 The teaching of St. John Baptist centred around three points: (1) the 
call to penitence (St. Matt. iii. 2, 8-10; St. Mark i. 4; St. Luke iii. 3, 
10-14); (2) the relative greatness of Christ (St. Matt. iii. 11-14 ; St. Mark i. 


ἡ: St. Luke iii. 16; St. John i. 15, 26, 27, 30-34); (3) the Judicial (οὗ τὸ 


πτύον ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ, St. Matt. iii. 12; St. Luke iii. 17) and Atoning (ἴδε 
6 ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν Tod κόσμου, St. John i. 29, 36) Work 
of Christ. In this way St. John corresponded to prophecy as preparing the 
way of the Lord (St. Matt. iii. 3 ; St. Mark i. 3; St. Luke iii. 4; St. Johni. 
23; Isa. xl. 3); but beyond naming the kingdom, the nature of the prepara- 
tion required for entering it, the supernatural greatness, and two of the 
functions of the King, St. John did not anticipate our Lord’s disclosures. 
St. John’s teaching left men quite uninformed as to what the kingdom of 
heaven was to be in itself. 

ir | 


112 Votes of ‘ originality’ in our Lord’s " plan. 


animating spirit of its inhabitants; what the sources of its life; 
what the vicissitudes of its establishment and triumph? These. 
and other elements of His plan are exhibited by our Lord Him- 
self, in His discourses, His parables, His institutions. That 
which had been more or less vague, He made definite; that which 
had been abstract, He threw into a concrete form; that which had 
been ideal, He clothed with the properties of working reality ; 
that which had been scattered over many books and ages, 
He brought into a focus. If prophecy supplied Him with some 

of the materials which He employed, prophecy could not have ῦ 
enabled Him to succeed in combining them. He combined them 
because He was Himself; His Person supplied the secret of 
their combination. His originality is indeed seen in the reality 
and life with which He lighted up the language used by men 
who had been sent in earlier ages to prepare His way; but 
if His creative thought employed these older materials, it did 
not depend on them. He actually gave a practical and ener- 
getic form to the idea of a strictly independent society of 
spiritual beings, with enlightened and purified consciences, 
cramped by no national or local bounds of privilege, and destined 
to spread throughout earth and heaven'. When He did this, 


¥ Guizot, Essence de la Religion chrétienne, p. 307: ‘Je reprends ces 
deux grands principes, ces deux grandes actes de Jésus-Christ, l’abolition de 
tout privilége dans les rapports des hommes avec Dieu, et la distinction de 
la vie religieuse, et de la vie civile; je les place en regard de tous les faits, de 
tous les états sociaux antérieurs & la venue de Jésus-Christ, et je ne puis 
découvrir ἃ ces caractéres essentiels de la religion chrétienne, aucune filiation, 
aucune origine humaine. Partout, avant Jésus-Christ, les religions étaient 
nationales, locales, établissant entre les peuples, les classes, les individus, des 
distances et des inégalités énormes. Partout aussi avant Jésus-Christ, la vie 
civile et la vie religieuse étaient confondues et s’opprimaient mutuellement ; 
- la religion ou les religions étaient des institutions incorporées dans létat, et 
que l'état réglait ou réprimait selon son intérét. Dans Vuniversalité de la 
foi religieuse, et l’indépendance de la société religieuse, je suis contraint de 
voir des nouveautés sublimes, des éclairs de la lumiére divine!’ Even Chan- 
ning, who understates our Lord’s ‘ plan,’ is alive to the originality and great- 
ness of that part of it which he recognises, Works, ii. 57. ‘The plans and 
labours of statesmen sink into the sports of children, when compared with 
the work which Jesus announced...... The idea of changing the moral 
aspect of the whole earth, of recovering all nations to the pure and inward 
worship of the one God, and to a Spirit of Divine and fraternal love (our 
Lord proposed much more than this), was one of which we meet not a trace 
in philosopher or legislator before Him. The human mind had given no 
promise of this extent of view...... We witness a vastness of purpose, a 
grandeur of thought and feeling, so original, so superior to the workings of 
all other minds, that nothing but our familiarity can prevent our contempla- 


tion of it with wonder and profound awe.’ 
[ LECT. | 


Boldness of the ‘plaw’ of Fesus Christ. 113 


prophets were not His masters; they had only foreshadowed 
His work. His plan can be traced in that masterful com- 
pleteness and symmetry, which is the seal of its intrinsic 
originality, to no source beyond Himself. Well might we ask 
with His astonished countrymen the question which was indeed 
prompted by their jealous curiosity, but which is natural to a 
very different temper, ‘Whence hath this Man this wisdom 8 Ὁ 

(8) And this opens upon us the second characteristic of our 
Lord’s plan, I mean that: which in any merely human plan, we 
should call its audacity. This audacity is observable, first of all, 
in the fact that the plan is originally proposed to the world with 
what might appear to us to be such hazardous completeness. 
The idea of the kingdom of God issues almost ‘as if in a single 
jet *’ and with a fully developed body from the thought of Jesus 
Christ. Put together the Sermon on the Mount, the Charge to 
the Twelve Apostles, the Parables of the Kingdom, the Discourse 
in the Supper-room, and the institution of the two great Sacra- 
ments, and the plan of our Saviour is before you. And it is 
enunciated with an accent of calm unfaltering conviction that it 
will be realized in human history. 

This is a phenomenon which we can only appreciate by con- 
trasting it with the law to which it is so signal an exception. 
Generally speaking, an ambitious idea appears at first as a mere 
outline, and it challenges attention in a tentative way. It is put 
forward enquiringly, timidly, that it may be completed by the 
suggestions of friends or modified by the criticism of opponents. 
The highest genius is always most keenly alive to the vicissitudes 
which may await its own creations ; it knows with what difficulty 
a promising project is launched safely and unimpaired out of the 
domain of abstract speculation into the region of practical human 
life. Even in art, where the materials to be moulded are, as 
compared with the subjects of moral or political endeavour, so 
much under command, it is not prudent to presume that a design 
or a conception will be carried out without additions or without 
curtailments. In this place we all have heard that between the 
θεωρία and the γένεσις of art there may be a fatal interval. The 
few bold strokes by which a Raffaelle has suggested a new form 


53 See Félix, Jésus-Christ et la Critique Nouvelle, pp. 127-133 ; Bushnell, 
Nature and the Supernatural, pp. 237-8. Keim has exaggerated the influence 
of Pharisaism upon the language and teaching of our Lord, which only 
resembled Pharisaism as being addressed to the Jewish mind in terms which 
it understood. Geschichtliche Christus, pp. 18-22. 

t Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 325. 
111 | I 


114 Chrest’s ‘plan’ complete from the first. 


of power or of beauty, may never be filled up upon his canvass. 
The working-drawings of a Phidias or a Michael Angelo may 
never be copied in stone or in marble. As has been said of S. T. 
Coleridge, art is perpetually throwing out designs which remain 
designs for ever ; and yet the artist possesses over his material, 
and even over his hand and his eye, a control which is altogether 
wanting to the man who would reconstruct or regenerate human 
society. For human society is an aggregate of human intelli- 
gences and of human wills, that is to say, of profound and mys- 
terious forces, upon the direction of which under absolutely new 
circumstances it is impossible for man to calculate. Accordingly, " 
social reformers tell us despondingly that facts make sad havoc 
of their fairest theories ; and that schemes which were designed 
to brighten and.to beautify the life of nations are either forgotten 
altogether, or, like the Republic of Plato, are remembered only 
as famous samples of the impracticable. For whenever a great 
idea, affecting the well-being of society, is permitted to force its 
way into the world of facts, it is liable to be carried out of its 
course, to be thrust hither and thither, to be compressed, exag- 
gerated, disfigured, mutilated, degraded, caricatured. It may 
encounter currents of hostile opinion and of incompatible facts, 
upon which its projector had never reckoned ; its course may be 
forced into a direction the exact reverse of that which he most 
earnestly desired. In the first French Revolution some of the 
most humane sociological projects were distorted into becoming 
the very animating principles of wholesale and extraordinary 
barbarities. In England we are fond of repeating the political 
maxim that ‘ constitutions are not made, but grow;’ we have a 
proverbial dread of the paper-schemes of government which from 
time to time are popular among our gifted and volatile neigh- 
bours. It is not that we English cannot admire the creations of 
political genius; but we hold that in the domain of human life 
genius must submit herself to the dictation of circumstances, and 
that she herself seems to shade off into erratic folly when she 
cannot clearly recognise the true limits of her power. 

Now Jesus Christ our Lord was in the true and very highest 
sense of the term a social reformer; yet He fully proclaimed 
the whole of His social plan before He began to realize it. Had 
He been merely a ‘great man,’ He would have been more pru- 
dent. He would have conditioned His design ; He would have 
tested it ; He would have developed it gradually ; He would 
have made trial of its working power ; and then He would have 
re-fashioned, or contracted, or expanded it, before = pro- 

LECT. 


No evidence of change in our Lord’s ‘plan! 115 


posing it to the consideration of the world. But His actual 
course must have seemed one of utter and reckless folly, unless 
the event had shewn it to be the dictate-of a more than human 
wisdom. He speaks as One Who is sure of the compactness and 
faultlessness of His design ; He is certain that no human obstacle 
can baulk its realization. He produces it simply without effort, 
without reserve, without exaggeration ; He is calm, because He 
is in possession of the future, and sees His way clearly through 
its tangled maze. There is no proof, no distant intimation of a 
change or of a modification of His plan. He did not, for instance, 
first aim at a political success, and then cover His failure by 
giving a religious turn or interpretation to His previous mani- 
festoes ; He did not begin as a religious teacher, and afterwards 
aspire to convert His increasing religious influence into political 
capital. No attempts to demonstrate any such vacillation in 
His purpose have reached even a moderate measure of success". 
Certainly, with the lapse of time, He enters upon a larger and 
larger area of ministerial action; He developes with majestic 
assurance, with decisive rapidity, the integral features of His 
work; His teaching centres more and more upon Himself as its 
central subject ; but He nowhere retracts, or modifies, or speaks 
or acts as would one who feels that he is dependent upon events 
or agencies which he cannot control*. A poor woman pays Him 


u Dr. Schenkel, in his Charakterbild Jesu, represents our Lord as a pious 
Jew, who did not assume to be the Messiah before the scene at Cesarea 
Philippi. Kap. xii. § 4, p. 138: ‘ Dadurch, dass Jesus Sich nun wirklich zu 
dem Bekenntnisse des Simon bekannte, trat er mit einem Schlage aus der 
verworrenen und verwirrenden Lage heraus, in welche Er, durch die Unklar- 
heit seiner Jiinger und den Meinungstreit in seiner Umgebung gebracht war. 
Ein Stichwort war jetzt gesprochen.’ This theory is obliged to reject the 
evangelical accounts of our Lord’s Baptism and Temptation, and to distort 
from their plain meaning the narratives of our Lord’s sermon in the synagogue 
at Nazareth (St. Luke iv. 16), of His call of the twelve Apostles, and of His 
claim to forgive sin. See the excellent remarks of M. Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, 
pp: 326, 327. | 

x Channing, Works, ii. 55. ‘ We feel that a new Being, of a new order of 
mind, is taking part in human affairs. There is a native tone of grandeur and 
authority in His teaching. He speaks as a Being related to the whole human 
race. A narrower sphere than the world never enters His thoughts. He 
speaks in a natural spontaneous style of accomplishing the most arduous and 
important change in human affairs. This unlaboured manner of expressing 
great thoughts is particularly worthy of attention. You never hear from 
Jesus that swelling, pompous, ostentatious language, which almost necessarily 
springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our powers. He talks 
of His glories, as one to whom they were familiar. . ... He speaks of saving 
and judging the world, of drawing all men to Himself, and of giving everlast- 
ing ἢ as we speak of the ordinary powers which we exert.’ 

III I 2 


116 Boldness of Christ’s plan, considered 


ceremonial respect at a feast, and He simply announces that 
the act will be told as a memorial of her throughout the world y; 
He bids His Apostles *do all things whatsoever He had com- 
manded them; He promises them His Spirit as a Guide into 
all necessary truth®: but He invests them with no such dis- 
cretionary powers, as might imply that His design would need 
revision under possible circumstances, or could be capable of 
improvement. He calmly turns the glance of His thought upon 
the long and chequered future which lies clearly displayed before 
Him, and in the immediate foreground of which is his own 
humiliating Death >. -Other founders of systems or of societies 
have thanked a kindly Providence for shrouding from their gaze 
the vicissitudes of coming time ; 


‘ Prudens futuri temporis exitum 
Caliginosa nocte premit deus ὃ ;’ 


but the Son of Man speaks as One Who sees beyond the most 
distant possibilities, and Who knows full well that His work is 
indestructible. ‘The gates of hell,’ He calmly observes, ‘shall 
not prevail against it4;’ ‘ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
My words shall not pass away 9.᾽ 

Nor is the boldness of Christ’s plan less observable in its 
actual substance, than in the fact of its original production in 
such completeness. Look at it, for the moment, from a political 
point of view. Here is, as it seems, a Galilean peasant, sur- 
rounded by a few followers taken like Himself from the lowest 
orders of society; yet He deliberately proposes to rule, all 
human thought, to make Himself the Centre of all human 
affections, to be the Lawgiver of humanity, and the Object 
of man’s adoration’. He founds a spiritual society, the thought 
and heart and activity of which are to converge upon His 
Person, and He tells His followers that this society which 
He is forming is the real explanation of the highest visions 
of seers and prophets, that it will embrace all races and extend 


y St. Matt. xxvi. 13; St. Mark xiv. 9. 


z St. Matt. xxviii. 20. a St. John xvi. 13. 
b St. Matt. xx. 19 ; St. Mark viii. 31. ¢ Hor. Od. iii. 29. 29. 
ἃ St. Matt. xvi. 18. 6 Ibid. xxiv. 35. 


f Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, p. 232. ‘To Jesus alone, the 
simple Galilean carpenter, it happens .. . that, having never seen a map 
of the world in His whole life, or heard the name of half the great nations 
on it, He undertakes, coming out of His shop, a scheme as much vaster 
and more difficult than that of Alexander, as it proposes more, and what 
is more Divinely benevolent.’ 
: [ LECT. 


as a religious and social enterprise. 117 


throughout all time. He places Himself before the world as 
the true goal of its expectations, and He points to His 
proposed work as the one hope for its future. There was to 
be a universal religion, and He would found it. A universal 
religion was just as foreign an idea to heathenism®& as to Judaism. 
Heathenism held that the state was the highest form of social 
life; religious life, like family life, was deemed subordinate 
to political interests. Morality was pretty nearly dwarfed down 
to the measure of common political virtue; sin was little else 
than political misdemeanour; religion was but a subordinate 
function of national life, differing in different countries according 
to the varying genius of the people, and rightly liable to being 
created or controlled by the government. A century and a 
half after the Incarnation, in his attack upon the Church, 
Celsus ridicules the idea of a universal religion as a manifest 
folly»; yet Jesus Christ has staked His whole claim to respect 
and confidence upon announcing it. Jesus Christ made no 
concessions to the passions or to the prejudices of mankind. 
The laws and maxims of His kingdom are for the most part 
in entire contradiction to the instincts of average human nature ; 
yet He predicts that His Gospel will be preached in all the 
world, and that finally there will be one fold and One Shepherd 
of meni, ‘Go,’ He says to His Apostles, ‘make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, 
lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world’ 
He founds a world-wide religion, and He promises to be the 
present invigorating force of that religion to the end of time. 
Are we not too accustomed to this language to feel the full 
force of its original meaning? How startlingly must it not 
have fallen upon the ears of Apostles! Words like these are 
not accounted for by any difference between the East and 
the West, between ancient and modern modes of speech. They 
will not bear honest translation into any modern phrase that 
would enable good men to use them now. Can we imagine 
such a command as that of our Lord upon the lips of the 


᾿ best, of the wisest of men whom we have ever known? Would 


it not be simply to imagine that goodness or wisdom had been 


Ξ Origen. contr. Celsum, ii. 46. h St. John x. 16. 

i The Stoic ‘cosmopolitanism’ (Sir A. Grant's Ethics of Aristotle, 
vol. i. 255; Merivale on Conversion of Roman Empire, p. 60) did not 
it to a religion, k St. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. 

ΠῚ 


118 healisation of our Lord’s ‘plan. 


exchanged for the folly of an intolerable presumption? Such 
language as that before us is indeed folly, unless it be something 
else; unless it be proved by the event to have been the highest 
wisdom, the wisdom of One, Whose ways are not our ways, 
nor His thoughts our thoughts 1, 

II. But has the plan of Jesus Christ been carried out? Does 
the kingdom of heaven exist on earth ? 

(1.) The Church of Christ is the living answer to that 
question. Boileau says somewhere that the Church is a great 
thought which every man ought to study. It would be more 
practical to say that the Church is a great fact which every 
man ought to measure. Probably we Christians are too fami- 
liarized with the blessed presence of the Church to do justice 
to her as a world-embracing institution, and as the nurse 
and guardian of our moral and mental life. Like the air 
we breathe, she bathes our whole being with influences which 
we do not analyse; and we hold her cheap in proportion 
to the magnitude of her unostentatious service. The sun rises 
on us day by day in the heavens, and we heed not his surpassing 
beauty until our languid sense is roused by some observant 
astronomer or artist. The Christian Church pours even upon 
those of us who love her least, floods of intellectual and moral 
light ; and yet it is only by an occasional intellectual effort 
that we detach ourselves sufficiently from the tender monotony 
of her influences, to understand how intrinsically extraordinary 
is the double fact of her perpetuated existence and of her 
continuous expansion. 

Glance for a moment at the history of the Christian Church 
from the days of the Apostles until now. What is it but a 
history of the gradual, unceasing self-expansion of an institution 
which, from the first hour of its existence, deliberately aimed, 
as it is aiming even now, at the conquest of the world™? Com- 
pare the Church which sought refuge and which prayed in the 
upper chamber at Jerusalem, with the Church of which St. Paul 
is the pioneer and champion in the latter portion of the Acts of 
the Apostles, or with the Church to which he refers, as already 
making its way throughout the world, in his "Apostolical 
Epistles". Compare again the Church of the Apostolical age 
with the Church of the age of Tertullian. Christianity had then 


1 Tsa. lv. 8. Cf. Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, pp. 231-233. 
Félix, ubi supra, pp. 134-139. 
m St. Luke xxiv. 47; Acts i. 8, ix. 15; Mark Xvi. 20. 
2 Rom. i. 8, x. 18, xv. 18-21 ; Col. i. 6, 23; cf. 1 St. Peter i. 1, &c. 
[ LECT. 


Continuous growth of the Church. 119 


already penetrated, at least in some degree, into all classes of 
Roman society°, and was even pursuing its missionary course in 
regions far beyond the frontiers of the empire?, in the forests of 
Germany, in the wilds of Scythia, in the deserts of Africa, and 
among the unsubdued and barbarous tribes who inhabited the 
northern extremity of our own island. Again, how nobly con- 
scious is the Church of the age of St. Augustine of her world- 
wide mission, and of her ever-widening area! how sharply is 
this consciousness contrasted with the attempt of Donatism to 
dwarf down the realization of the plan of Jesus Christ to the 
narrow proportions of a national or provincial enterprise4! In 
the writings of Augustine especially, we see the Church of 
Christ tenaciously grasping the deposit of revealed unchanging 
doctrine, while liturgies the most dissimilar, and teachers of 
many tongues’, and a large variety of ecclesiastical customs’, 


ο Tert. Apol. 37: ‘Hesterni sumus, et vestra omnia implevimus, urbes, 
insulas, castella, municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa, tribus, decurias, pala- 
tium, senatum, forum, sola vobis relinquimus templa.’ Cf. de Rossi, Roma 
Sotteranea, i. p. 309. 

P Tert. adv. Judeos, c. 7: ‘Jam Getulorum varietates, et Maurorum multi 
fines, Hispaniarum omnes termini, et Galliarum diverse nationes, et Britan- 
norum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita, et Sarmatarum, et 
Dacorum, et Germanorum, et Scytharum, et abditarum multarum gentium et 
provinciarum, et insularum multarum nobis ignotarum, et que enumerare 
minus possumus. In. quibus omnibus locis, Christi nomen, qui jam venit, 
regnat, utpote ante Quem omnium civitatum porte sunt aperte.’ 

a St. Aug. Ep. xlix. n. 3: ‘Querimus ergo, ut nobis respondere non 
graveris, quam causam forte noveris qué factum est, ut Christus amitteret 
hereditatem Suam per orbem terrarum diffusam, et subito in solis Afris, nec 
ipsis omnibus remaneret. Etenim ecclesia Catholica est etiam in Afric& quia 
per omnes terras eam Deus esse voluit et predixit. Pars autem vestra, quee 
Donati dicitur, non est in omnibus illis locis, in quibus et literze et sermo et 
facta apostolica cucurrerunt.’ In Ps. lxxxv. ἢ. 14: ‘Christo enim tales 
maledicunt, qui dicunt, quia periit ecclesia de orbe terrarum, et remansit in 
sola Africé.? Compare 8. Hieron. adv. Lucifer. tom. iv. pt. ii. p. 298: ‘Si 
in Sardinia tantum habet [ecclesiam Christus] nimium pauper factus est.’ 
And St. Chrys. in Col. Hom. i. ἢ. 2; in r Cor. Hom. xxxii. n. 1. 

* In Ps. xliv. (Vulg.) Enarr. n. 24: ‘Sacramenta doctrine in linguis 
omnibus variis. Alia lingua Afra, alia Syra, alia Greca, alia Hebreea, alia 
illa et illa; faciunt iste lingue varietatem vestis regine hujus; quomodo 
autem omnis varietatis vestis in unitate concordat, sic et omnes lingue ad 
unam fidem.’ 

s Ep. liv. ad Januar. n. 2: ‘Alia vero [sunt] que per loca terrarum 
regionesque variantur, sicuti est quod alii jejunant sabbato, alii non ; alii 
quotidié communicant Corpori et Sanguini Domini, alii certis diebus ac- 
cipiunt ; alibi nullus dies preetermittitur, quo non offeratur, alibi sabbato 
tantum et dominico, alibi tantum dominico; et si quid aliud hujusmodi 
a potest, totwm hoc genus rerum liberas habet observationes ; nec 
111 


120 Actual area and prospects of the Church. 


find an equal welcome within her comprehensive bosom. Yet 
contrast the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries with the 
Church of the middle ages, or with the Church of our own 
day. In the fourth and even in the fifth century, whatever may 
have been the activity of individual missionaries, the Church 
was still for the most part contained within the limits of the 
empire; and of parts of the empire she had scarcely as yet 
taken possession. She was still confronted by powerful sections 
of the population, passionately attached for various reasons to 
the ancient superstition: nobles such as the powerful Sym- 
machus, and orators like the accomplished Libanius, were among 
her most earnest opponents. But it is now scarcely less than a 
thousand years since Jesus Christ received at least the outward 
submission of the whole of Europe; and from that time to this 
His empire has been continually expanding. The newly-dis- 
covered continents of Australia and America have successively 
acknowledged His sway. He is shedding the light of His 
doctrine first upon one and then upon another of the islands of 
the Pacific. He has beleaguered the vast African continent on 
either side with various forms of missionary enterprise. And 
although in Asia there are vast, ancient, and highly organized 
religions which are still permitted to bid Him defiance, yet 
India, China, Tartary, and Kamschatka have within the last few 
years witnessed heroic labours and sacrifices for the spread of 
His kingdom, which would not have been unworthy of the 
purest and noblest enthusiasms of the Primitive Church. Nor 
are these efforts so fruitless as the ruling prejudices or the lack 
of trustworthy information on such subjects, which are so com- 
mon in Western Europe, might occasionally suggest. 

Already the kingdom of the Redeemer may be said to em- 
brace three continents ; but what are its prospects, even if we 
measure them by a strictly human estimate? Is it not a simple 
matter of fact that at this moment the progress of the human 
race is entirely identified with the spread of the influence of the 
nations of Christendom? What Buddhist, or Mohammedan, or 
Pagan nation is believed by others, or believes itself, to be able to 


disciplina ulla est in his melior gravi prudentique Christiano, quam ut 60 
modo agat, quo agere viderit ecclesiam, ad quam forte devenertt. Quod enim 
neque contra fidem, neque bonos mores esse convincitur, indifferenter est 
habendum et propter eorum, inter quos vivitur, societatem servandum est.’ 

* As to the Russian Missions, see Boissard, Eglise de Russie, tom. i. pp. 100- 
104; Voices from the East, by Rev. J. M. Neale, London, Masters, 1859, 
pp. 81-113. 

[ LECT. 


Objection; Losses and divisions of Christendom. 121 


affect for good the future destinies of the human race? The 
idea of a continuous progress of humanity, whatever perversions 
that idea may have undergone, is really a creation of the 
Christian faith. The nations of Christendom, in exact pro- 
portion to the strength, point, and fervour of their Christianity, 
seriously believe that they can command the future, and in- 
stinctively associate themselves with the Church’s aspirations 
for a world-wide empire. Such a confidence, by the mere fact 
of its existence, is already on the road to justifying itself by 
success. It never was stronger, on the whole, than it is in our 
own day. If in certain districts of European, opinion it may 
seem to be waning, this is only because such sections of opinion 
have for the moment rejected the empire of Christ. Their 
aberrations do not set aside, they rather act as a foil to that 
general belief in a moral and social progress of mankind which 
at bottom is so intimately associated with the belief of Christian 
men in the coming triumph of the Church. 

(2.) But long ere this, my brethren, as 1 am well aware, you 
have been prepared to interrupt me with a group of objections. 
Surely, you will say, this representation of the past, of the 
present, and of the future of the Church may suffice for an ideal 
picture, but it is not history. Is not the verdict of history a 
different and a less encouraging one? First of all, do Church 
annals present this spectacle of an ever-widening extension of 
the kingdom of Christ? What then is to be said of the spread 
of great and vital heresies, such as the medieval Nestorianism, 
through countries which once believed with the Church in the 
One Person and two Natures of her Lord"? Again, is it not 
a matter of historical fact that the Church has lost entire pro- 
vinces both in Africa and in the East, since the rise of Moham- 
medanism? And are her losses only to be measured by the 
territorial area which she once occupied, and from which she 
has been beaten back by the armies of the alien? Has she not, 
by the controversies of the tenth and of the sixteenth centuries, 


been herself splintered into three great sections, which still con- 


tinue to act in outward separation from each other, to their own 
extreme mutual loss and discouragement, and to the immense 
and undisguised satisfaction of all enemies of the Christian 
name? Are not large bodies of active and earnest Christians 
living in separation from her communion? Do not our mis- 
slonary associations perpetually lament their failures to achieve 


Ὁ See Gibbon, Decl. and Fall, ch. xlvii. 
II | 


122 Losses and divisions of Christendom. 


any large permanent conquests for Christ? Once more, is it 
not a matter of notoriety that the leading nations of Christian 
Europe are themselves honeycombed by a deadly rationalism, 
which gives no quarter in its contemptuous yet passionate on- 
slaughts on the faith of Christians, and which never calculated | 
more confidently than it does at the present time upon achieving 
the total destruction of the empire of Jesus Christ ? 

My brethren, you do a service to my argument in stating 
these apparent objections to its force. The substance of your 
plea cannot be ignored by any who would honestly apprehend 
the matter before us. You point, for instance, to the territorial 
losses which the Church has sustained at the hands of heretical 
Christians or of Moslem invaders. True: the Church of Christ 
has sustained such losses. But has she not more than redressed 
them in other directions? Is she not now, in India and in 
Africa, carrying the banner of the Cross into the territory of 
the Crescent? You insist upon the grave differences which form 
a barrier at this moment between the Eastern and the Western 
Churches, and between the two great divisions of the Western 
Church itself. Your estimate of those differences may be a 
somewhat exaggerated one. The renewed harmony and co- 
operation of the separated portions of the family of Christ may 
not be so entirely remote as you would suggest. Yet we must 
undoubtedly acknowledge that existing divisions, like all ha- 
bitual sin within the sacred precincts of the Church, are a 
standing and very serious violation of the law of its Founder. 
Nor is this disorder summarily to be remedied by our ceding to 
the unwarrantable pretensions of one section of the Church, 
which may endeavour to persuade the rest of Christendom, that 
it is itself co-extensive with the whole kingdom of the Saviour. 
The divisions of Christ’s family, lamentable and in many ways 
disastrous as they are, must be ended, if at all, by the warmer 
charity and more fervent prayers of believing Christians. But 
meanwhile, do not these very divisions afford an indirect illus- 
tration of the extraordinary vitality of the new kingdom? Has 
the kingdom ceased to enlarge its territory since the troubled 
times of the sixteenth century? On the contrary, it is simply a 
matter of fact that, since that date, its ratio of extension has 
been greater than at any previous period. The philosopher who 
supposes that the Church is on the point of dying out because of 
her divisions must be strangely insensible to the higher con- 
victions which are increasingly prevailing in the minds of men. 
And the confessions of failure on the part of some th our 

LECT. 


Strength and weakness of modern unbelief. 123 


missionaries are certainly balanced by many and thankful nar- 
ratives of great results accomplished under circumstances of the 
utmost discouragement. 

But you insist most emphatically upon the spread and upon 
the strength of modern rationalism. You say that rationalism 
is enthroned in the midst of civilizations which the Church her- 
self has formed and nursed. You urge that rationalism, like 
the rottenness which has seized upon the heart of the forest oak, 
must sooner or later arrest the growth of branch and foliage, 
and bring the tree which it is destroying to the ground. Now 
we cannot deny, what is indeed a patent and melancholy fact, 
that some of the most energetic of the intellectual movements 
in modern Europe frankly avow and enthusiastically advocate 
an explicit and total rejection of the Christian creed. Yet it is 
possible to overrate the importance and to mistake the true sig- 
nificance of this recent advance of unbelief. Of course Christian 
faith can be daunted or surprised by no form or intensity of 
opposition to truth, when there are always so many reasons for 
opposing it. We Christians know what we have to expect from 
the human heart in its natural state; while on the other hand 
we have been told that the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
the Church of the Redeemer. But, in speculating on the future 
destinies of the Church, as they are affected by rationalism, this 
hopeful confidence of a sound faith may be seconded by the 
calm estimate of the reflective reason. For, first, it may fairly 
be questioned whether the publicly proclaimed unbelief of 
modern times is really more general or more pronounced than 
the secret but active and deeply penetrating scepticism which 
during considerable portions of the middle ages laid such hold 
upon the intellect of Europex. Yet the medieval sceptics cannot 
be said to have permanently hampered the progress of the 
Church. Again, modern unbelief may be deemed less formid- 
able when we steadily observe its moral impotence for all con- 
structive purposes. Its strength and genius lie only in the 
direction of destruction. It has shewn no sort of power to. 
build up any spiritual fabric or system which, as a shelter and a 
discipline for the hearts and lives of men, can take the place of 
that which it seeks to destroy. Leaving some of the deepest, 
most legitimate, and most ineradicable needs of the human 
soul utterly unsatisfied, modern unbelief can never really hope 


x Cf. Newman, Lectures on University Subjects, pp. 296,297. Milman, 
Latin Christianity, vi. 444. See too St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, i. 4. 


111 | 


124 Unbelief, undesignedly the servant of the Church. 


permanently to establish a popular ‘religion of humanityy.’ Thus 
the force of its intellectual onset upon revealed dogma is con- 
tinually being broken by the consciousness, that it cannot long 
maintain the ground which it may seem to itself for the moment 
to have won. Its highest speculative energy is more than 
counterbalanced by the moral power of some humble teacher of 
a positive creed for whom possibly it entertains nothing less 
than a sovereign contempt. Thirdly, unbelief resembles social 
or political persecution in this, that, indirectly, it does an 
inevitable service to the Faith which it attacks. It forces 
earnest believers in Jesus Christ to minimize all differences 
which are less than fundamental. It compels Christian men to 
repress with a strong hand all exaggeration of existing motives 
for a divided action. It obliges Christians, sometimes in spite 
of themselves, to work side by side for their insulted Lord. 
Thus it not only creates freshened sympathies between tem- 
porarily severed branches of the Church; it draws toward the 
Church herself, with an increasingly powerful and comprehensive 
attraction, many of those earnestly believing men, who, as is the 
case with numbers among our nonconformist brethren in this 
country, already belong, in St. Augustine’s language, to the soul, 
although not to the body, of the Catholic Communion. Lastly, 
it unwittingly contributes to augment the evidential strength of 
Christianity, at the very moment of its assault upon Christian 
doctrine. The fierceness of man turns to the praise of Jesus 
Christ, by demonstrating, each day, each year, each decade of 
years, each century, the indestructibility of His work in the 
world ; and unbelief voluntarily condemns itself to the task of 
maintaining before the eyes of men that enduring tradition of 
an implacable hostility to the kingdom of heaven, which it is the 
glory of our Saviour so explicitly to have predicted, and so con- 
sistently and triumphantly to have defied. 

3. For these and other reasons, modern oahelak although 
formidable, will not be deemed so full of menace to the future of 
the kingdom of our Lord as may sometimes be apprehended by 
the neryous timidity of Christian piety. This will appear more 


y The attempt of M. Auguste Comte, in his later life, to elaborate a kind 
of ritual as a devotional and esthetical appendage to the Positivist Phi- 
losophy, implies a sense of this truth. M. Comte however does not appear 
to have carried any large section of the Positivist school with him in this — 
singular enterprise. But a like poverty of moral and spiritual provision for 
the soul of man is observable in rationalistic systems which stop very far 
short of the literal godlessness of the Positive Philosophy. 

[ LECT. 


L[nutensity of our Lord’s work in souls. 125 


certain if from considering the extent of Christ’s realm we turn 
to the intensive side of His work among men. [For indeed the 
‘depth of our Lord’s work in the soul of man has ever been more 
wonderful than its breadth. The moral intensity of the life of a 
sincere Christian is a more signal illustration of the reality of 
the reign of Christ, and of the success of His plan, than is the 
territorial range of the Christian empire. ‘The King’s daughter 
is all glorious within.’ Christianity may have conferred a new 
sanction upon civil and domestic relationships among men ; 
and it certainly infused a new life into the most degraded 
society that the world has yet seen”. Still this was not its pri- 
mary aim ; its primary efforts were directed not to this world, 
but to the next®. Christianity has changed many of the out- 
ward aspects of human existence ; it has created a new religious 
language, a new type of worship, a new calendar of time. It has 
furnished new ideals to art; it has opened nothing less than a 
new world of literature; it has invested the forms of social 
intercourse among men with new graces of refinement and 
mutual consideration. Yet these are but some of the superficial 
symptoms of its real work. It has achieved these changes in the 
outward life of Christian nations, because it has penetrated to 
the very depths of man’s heart and thought; because it has 
revolutionized his convictions and tamed his will, and then ex- 
pressed its triumph in the altered social system of that section 
of the human race which has generally received it. How com- 
plete at this moment is the reign of Christ.in the soul of a 
sincere Christian! Christ is not a limited, He is emphatically 
an absolute Monarch. Yet His rule is welcomed by His subjects 
with more than that enthusiasm which a free people can feel for 
its elected magistracy. Every sincere Christian bows to Jesus 
Christ as to an Intellectual Master. Our Lord is not merely 


z St. Aug. Ep. cxxxviii. ad Marcellin. n. 15: ‘Qui doctrinam Christi 
adversam dicunt esse reipublice, dent exercitum talem, quales doctrina 
Christi esse milites jussit, dent tales provinciales, tales maritos, tales con- 
juges, tales parentes, tales filios, tales dominos, tales servos, tales reges, tales 
judices, tales denique debitorum ipsius fisci redditores et exactores, quales 
esse precipit doctrina Christiana, et audeant eam dicere adversam esse rei- 
public, immd verd non dubitent eam confiteri magnam, si obtemperetur, 
salutem esse reipublice.’ 

ἃ δύ, Hieronymus adv. Jovin. lib. ii. tom. iv. pars ii. p. 200, ed. Martian : 
‘Nostra religio non πυκτὴν, non athletam (St. Jerome might almost have in 
his eye a certain well-known modern theory) non nautas, non milites, non 
fossores, sed sapientiz erudit sectatorem, qui se Dei cultui dedicavit, et scit 
cur creatus sit, cur versetur in mundo, quo abire festinet.’ 

11) 


126 Lutensity of our Lord’s work in souls. 


listened to as a Teacher of Truth; He is contemplated as the 
absolute Truth itself. Accordingly no portion of His teaching is 
received by true Christians merely as a ‘view,’ or as a ‘tenta- 
tive system,’ or as a ‘theory,’ which may be entertained, dis- 
cussed, partially adopted, and partially set aside. Those who 
deal thus with Him are understood to have broken with Chris- 
tianity, at least as a practical religion. For a Christian, the 
Words of Christ constitute the highest criterion and rule of truth. 
All that Christ has authorized is simply accepted, all that He 
has condemned is simply rejected, with the whole energy of the 
Christian reason. Christ’s Thought is reflected, it is reproduced, 
in the thought of the true Christian. Christ’s authority in the 
sphere of speculative truth is thankfully acknowledged by the 
Christian’s voluntary and unreserved submission to the slightest 
known intimations of his Master’s judgment. High above the 
claims of human teachers, the tremendous self-assertion of Jesus 
Christ echoes on from age to age,—‘I am the Truth>.” And 
from age to age the Christian mind responds by a life-long 
endeavour ‘to bring every thought into captivity unto the obe- 
dience of Christ®.’ But if Jesus Christ is Lord of the Christian’s 
thought, He is also Lord of the Christian’s affections. Beauty 
it is which provokes love; and Christ is the highest Moral 
Beauty. He does not merely rank as an exponent of the purest 
morality. He is absolute Virtue, embodied in a human life, and 
vividly, energetically set forth before our eyes in the story of 
the Gospels. As such, He claims to reign over the inmost 
affections of men. As such, He secures the first place in the 
heart of every true Christian. To have taken the measure of 
His Beauty, and yet not to love Him, is, in a Christian’s judg- 
ment, to be self-condemned. ‘If any man love not the Lord 
Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha4.’ And ruling 
the affections of the Christian, Christ is also King of the 
sovereign faculty in the Christianized soul; He is Master of the 
Christian will. When He has tamed its native stubbornness, 
He teaches it day by day a more and more pliant accuracy of 
movement in obedience to Himself. Nay, He is not merely its 
rule of action, but its very motive power ; each act of devotion 
and self-sacrifice of which it is capable is but an extension of the 
energy of Christ’s Own moral Life. ‘Without Me,’ he says to 
His servants, ‘ye can do nothing®;’ and with St. Paul His 


b St. John xiv. 6. δ... Ὅον. χὶ κ᾿ 
ἃ x Cor. xvi. 22. e St. John xv. 5. 
[ LECT. 


‘Christ ἐς Christianity.’ 127 


servants reply, ‘I can do all things through Christ Which 
strengtheneth Mef’ 

This may be expressed in other terms by saying that, both 
intellectually and morally, Christ is Christianity. Christianity 
is not related to our Lord as a philosophy might be to a philo- 
sopher, that is, as a moral or intellectual system thrown off from 
his mind, resting thenceforward on its own merits, and implying 
no necessary relation towards its author on the part of those 
who receive it, beyond a certain sympathy with what was at 
one time a portion of his thought. A philosophy may be thus 
abstracted altogether from the person of its originator, with 
entire impunity. Platonic thought would not have been 
damaged, if Plato had been annihilated ; and in our day men 
are Hegelians or Comtists, without believing that the respective 
authors of those systems are in existence at this moment, nay 
rather, in the majority of cases, while deliberately holding that 
they have ceased to be. The utmost stretch of personal alle- 
giance, on the part of the disciple of a philosophy to its founder, 
consists, ordinarily speaking, in a sentiment of devotion ‘to his 
memory. But detach Christianity from Christ, and it vanishes 
before your eyes into intellectual vapour. For it is of the 
essence of Christianity that, day by day, hour by hour, the 
Christian should live in conscious, felt, sustained relationship to 
the Ever-living Author of his creed and of his life. Christianity 
is non-existent apart from Christ; it centres in Christ; it 
radiates, now as at the first, from Christ. It is not a mere 
doctrine bequeathed by Him to a world with which He has 
ceased to have dealings ; it perishes outright when men attempt 
to abstract it from the Living Person of its Founder. He is felt 
by His people to be their Living Lord, really present with them 
now, and even unto the end of the world. The Christian life 
springs from and is sustained by the apprehension of Christ 
present in His Church, present in and with His members as a 
πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν ἢ, Christ is the quickening Spirit of Christian 
humanity ; He lives in Christians; He thinks in Christians ; 
He acts through Christians and with Christians; He is indis- 
solubly associated with every movement of the Christian’s deepest 
life. ‘I live,’ exclaims the: Apostle, ‘yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in mei,’ This felt presence of Christ it is, which gives both its 


f Phil. iv. 13. 

5. Luthardt, Grundwahrheiten des Christenthums, p. 227: ‘Er ist der 
Inhalt seiner Lehre.’ h 1 Cor. xv. 45. i Gal. ii. 20. 
11 


128 Ls the Sermon on the Mount a dead letter? 


form and its force to the sincere Christian life. That life is a 
~ loyal homage of the intellect, of the heart, and of the will, to a 
Divine King, with Whom will, heart, and intellect are in close 
and constant communion, and from Whom there flows forth, 
through the Spirit and the Sacraments, that supply of light, of 
love, and of resolve, which enriches and ennobles the Christian 
soul. My brethren, 1 am not theorizing or describing any 
merely ideal state of things; I am but putting into words the 
inner experience of every true Christian among you; I am but 
exhibiting a set of spiritual circumstances which, as a matter of 
course, every true Christian endeavours to realize and make his 
own, and which, as a matter of fact, blessed be God! very many 
Christians do realize, to their present peace, and to their eternal 

welfare. ; | 
Certainly it is not uncommon in our day to be informed, that 
‘the Sermon on the Mount is a dead letter in Christendom.’ 
In consequence (so men speak) of the engrossing interest which 
Christians have wrongly attached to the discussion of dogmatic 
questions, that original draught of essential Christianity, the 
Sermon on the Mount, has been wellnigh altogether lost sight 
of. Perhaps you yourselves, my brethren, ere now have repeated 
some of the current commonplaces on this topic. But have you 
endeavoured to ascertain whether it is indeed as you say? You 
remark that you at least have not met with Christians who 
seemed to be making any sincere efforts to turn the Sermon on 
the Mount into practice. It may be so. But the question is, 
where have you looked for them? Do you expect to meet them 
rushing hurriedly along the great highways of life, with the 
keen, eager, self-asserting multitude? Do you expect, that with 
their eye upon the Beatitudes and upon the Cross, they will 
throng the roads which lead to worldly success, to earthly 
wealth, to temporal honour? Be assured that those who know 
where moral beauty, aye, the highest, is to be found, are not 
disappointed, even at this hour, in their search for it. Until 
you have looked more carefully, more anxiously than has 
probably been the ease, for the triumphs of our Lord’s work in 
Christian souls, you may do well to take upon trust the testi- 
mony of others. You may at least be sufficiently generous, aye, 
and sufficiently reasonable, to believe in the existence at this 
present time of the very highest types of Christian virtue. It is 
a simple matter of fact that in our day, multitudes of men and 
women do lead the life of the Beatitudes ; they pray, they fast, 
they do alms to their Father Which seeth in secret. ar are 
LECT, 


‘ 


΄ 


Is the Sermon on the Mount a dead letter ? 129 


Christians who take no thought for the morrow. These are 
Christians whose righteousness does exceed that worldly and 
conventional standard of religion, which knows no law save the 
corrupt public opinion of the hour, and which inherits in every 
generation the essential spirit of the Scribes and Pharisees. 
These are Christians who shew forth the moral creativeness of 
Jesus Christ in their own deeds and words; they are living 
witnesses to His solitary and supreme power of changing the 
human heart. They were naturally proud; He has enabled 
them to be sincerely humble. They were, by the inherited 
taint of their nature, impure ; He has in them shed honour upon 
the highest forms of chastity. They too were, as in his natural 
state man ever is, suspicious of and hostile to their fellow-men, 
unless connected with them by blood, or by country, or by interest. 
But Jesus Christ has taught them the tenderest and most 


practical forms of love for man viewed simply as man; He has | 


inspired them with the only true, that is, the Christian, huma- 
nitarianism. Think not that the moral energy of the Christian 
life was confined to the Church of the first centuries. At this 
moment, there are millions of souls in the world, that are pure, 
humble, and loving. But for Jesus Christ our Lord, these 
millions would have been proud, sensual, selfish. At this very 
day, and even in atmospheres where the taint of scepticism dulls 
the brightness of Christian thought, and enfeebles the strength 
of Christian resolution, there are to be found men, whose intel- 
ligence gazes on Jesus with a faith so clear and strong, whose 
affection clings to Him with so trustful and so warm an embrace, 
whose resolution has been so disciplined and braced to serve 
Him by a persevering obedience, that, beyond a doubt, they 
would joyfully die for Him, if by shedding their blood they could 
better express their devotion to His Person, or lead others to 
know. and to love Him more. Blessed be God, that portion of 
His one Fold in which He has placed us, the Church of England, 
has not lacked the lustre of such lives as these. Such assuredly 
was Ken ; such was Bishop Wilson ; such have been many whose 
names have never appeared in the page of history. Has not one 
indeed quite lately passed from among us, the boast and glory of 
this our University, great as a poet, greater still, it may be, as 
a scholar and a theologian, greatest of all as a Christian saint 1 
Certainly to know him, even slightly, was inevitably to know 
that he led a life distinct from, and higher than, that of common 
men. ‘To know him well, was to revere and to love in him 


manifested beauty of his ‘Lord’s presence ; it was to tragé the~ 
111 | K Ay” OF 


130 Socal results of Christianity. 


sensibly perpetuated power of the Life, of the Teaching, of the 
Cross of Jesus *, 

4. On the other hand, look at certain palpable effects of our 
Lord’s work which lie on the very face of human society. If 
society, apart from the Church, is more kindly-and humane than 
in heathen times, this is due to the work of Christ on the hearts 
of men. The era of ‘humanity’ is the era of the Incarnation. 
The sense of human brotherhood, the acknowledgment of the 
sacredness of human rights, the recognition of that particular 
stock of rights which appertains to every human being, is a cre- 
ation of Christian dogma. It has radiated from the heart of the 
Christian Church into the society of the outer world. Chris- 
tianity is the power which first gradually softened slavery, and 
is now finally abolishing it. Christianity has proclaimed the 
dignity of poverty, and has insisted upon the claims of the poor, 
with a success proportioned to the sincerity which has welcomed 
her doctrines among. the different peoples of Christendom. The 
hospital is an invention of Christian philanthropy!; the active 
charity of the Church of the fourth century forced into the Greek 
language a word for which Paganism had had no occasion. The 
degradation of woman in the Pagan world has been exchanged 
for a position of special privilege and honour, accorded to her 
by the Christian nations. The sensualism which Pagans mistook 
for love has been placed under the ban of all true Christian 
feeling ; and in Christendom, love is now the purest of moral 
impulses ; it is the tenderest, the noblest, the most refined of 
the movements of the soul. The old, the universal, the natural 
feeling of bitter hostility between races, nations, and classes of 
men is denounced by Christianity. The spread of Christian 
truth inevitably breaks down the ferocities of national prejudice, 
and prepares the world for that cosmopolitanism which, we are 
told, is its most probable future. International law had no real 
existence until the nations, taught by Christ, had begun to feel 
the bond ofsbrotherhood. International law is now each year 
becoming more and more powerful in regulating the affairs of the 
civilized world. And if we are sorrowfully reminded that the 
' prophecy of a world-wide peace within the limits of Christ’s 
kingdom has not yet been realized; if Christian lands, in our 


k The author of the Christian Year had passed to his rest during the in- 
terval that elapsed between the delivery of the second and the third of these 
lectures, on March 30, 1866. 

1 Hallam’s Middle Ages, chap. ix. part i. vol. ii. p. 365. 

[ LECT. 


- 
ΡῈ - ΓΕ 


εγροίμξέν of the Church. 131 


day as before, are reddened by streams of Christian blood; yet 
the utter disdain of the plea of right, the high-handed and 
barbarous savagery, which marked the wars of heathendom, have 
given way to sentiments in which justice can at least obtain 
a hearing, arid which compassion and generosity, drawing their 
Inspirations from the — have at times raised to the level of 
chivalry. 

But neither νου! any improvements in man’s social life, nor 
even the regenerate lives of individual Christians, of themselves, 
have realized our Lord’s ‘plan’ in its completeness™. His design 
was to found a society or Church ; individual sanctity and social 
amelioration are only effects radiating from the Church. The 
Church herself is the true proof of His success. After the lapse 
of eighteen centuries the kingdom of Christ is here, and it is 
still expanding. How fares it generally with a human under- 
taking when exposed to the action of a long period of time? The 
idea which was its very soul is thrown into the shade by some 
other idea; or it is warped, or distorted, or diverted from its 
- true direction, or changed by some radical corruption. In the 
end it dies out from among the. living thoughts of men, and 
takes its place in the tomb of so much forgotten speculation, on 
the shelves of a library. Within a short lifetime we may follow © 
many a popular moral impulse from its cradle to its grave. 
From the era of its young enthusiasm, we mark its gradual 
entry upon the stage of fixed habit ; from this again we pass to 
its day of lifeless formalism, and to the rapid progress of its de- 
cline. But the Society founded by Jesus Christ is here, still 
animated by its original idea, still carried forward by the moral 
impulse which sustained it in its infancy. If Christian doctrine 


m A reviewer, who naturally must dissent from parts of the teaching of 
these lectures, but of whose generosity and fairness the lecturer is deeply 
sensible, reminds him that ‘Our Lord came to carry out the counsel of the 
Eternal Father; and that counsel was, primarily, to establish, through His 
sacrificial death, an economy of mercy, under which justification and spiritual 
and eternal life should be realized by all who should penitently rely on Him,’ 
St. John iii. 16, vi. 38-40. Undoubtedly. But this ‘economy of mercy’ 
included the establishment of a world-embracing church, within which it was 
to be dispensed. Col. i. 10-14. Our Lord founded His Church, not by way 
of achieving a vast social feat or victory, but with a view to the ‘needs of the 
human soul, which He came from heaven to save. Nevertheless the Church 
is not related to our Lord’s design as an ‘inseparable accident.’ It is that 
design . itself, viewed on its historical and social side; it is the form which, 
so far as we know, His redemptive work necessarily took, and which He Him- 
self founded as being the imperishable result of His Incarnation and Death. 
St. Matt. xvi. 18, Cf. Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, Dec. 1867, p. 1086. 


111 | K 2 


142 How to account Sor the success of Christ's ‘ plan’ 


has, in particular branches of the Church, been overlaid by an 
encrustation of foreign and earthly elements, its body and sub- 
stance is untouched in each great division of the Catholic 
Society; and much of it, we rejoice to know, is retained by com- 
munities external to the Holy Fold, If intimate union with the 
worldly power of the State (as especially in England during 
the last century) has sometimes seemed to chill the warmth of 
Christian love, and to substitute a heartless externalism for the 
spiritual life of a Christian brotherhood ; yet again and again 
the flame of that Spirit Whom the Son of Man sent to ‘glorify’ 
Himself, has burst up from the depths of the living heart of the 
Church, and has kindled among a generation of sceptics or sen- 
sualists a pure and keen enthusiasm which confessors and martyrs 
might have recognised as their own.. The Church of Christ in 
sooth carries within herself the secret forces which renew her. 
moral vigour, and which will, in God’s good time, visibly re- 
assert her essential unity. Her perpetuated existence among 
ourselves at this hour bears a witness to the superhuman powers 
of her Founder, not less significant than that afforded by the 
intensity of the individual Christian life, or by the territorial 
range of the Christian empire. 

III. The work of Jesus Christ in the world is a patent fact, 
and it is still in full progress before our eyes. The question . 
remains, How are we to account for its success ? 

1. If this question is asked with respect to the ascendancy 
of such a national religion as the popular Paganism of Greece, 
it is obvious to refer to the doctrine of the prehistoric mythus. 
The Greek religious creed was, at least in the main, a creation of 
the national imagination at a period when reflection and ex- 
perience could scarcely have existed. It was recommended to 
subsequent generations, not merely by the indefinable charm of 
poetry which was thrown around it, not merely by the antiquity 
which shrouded its actual origin, but by its accurate sympathy 
with the genius as with the degradations of the gifted race which 
had produced it. But of late years we have heard less of the 
attempt to apply the doctrine of the mythus to a series of well- 
ascertained historical events, occurring in the mid-day light of 
history, and open to the hostile criticism of an entire people. 
The historical imagination, steadily applied to the problem, re- 
fuses to picture the unimaginable process by which such stupen- 
dous ‘myths’ as those of the Gospel could have been festooned 
around the simple history of a humble preacher of righteousness. 


n Luthardt, Grundwahrheiten des Christenthums, p. 234. 
LECT. 


Not-parallel to the Success of false religions. 133 


The early Christian Church does not supply the intellectual 
agencies that could have been equal to any such task. As 
Rousseau has observed, the inventor of such a history would 
have been not less wonderful than its Subject®; and the utter 
reversal of the ordinary laws of a people’s mental development 
would have been itself a miracle. Nor was it to be anticipated 
that a religion which was, as the mythical school asserts, the 
‘creation of the Jewish race,’ would have made itself a home, at 
the very beginning of its existence, among the Greek and the 
Roman peoples of the Western world. If however we are re- 
ferred to the upgrowth and spread of Buddhism, as to a pheno- 
menon which may rival and explain the triumph of Christianity, 
it may be sufficient to reply that the writers who insist upon this 
parallel are themselves eminently successful in analysing the 
purely natural causes of the success of Gakya-Mouni. They 
dwell among other points on the rare delicacy and fertility of 
the Aryan imagination?, and on the absence of any strong 
counter-attraction to arrest the course of the new doctrine in 
Central and South-eastern Asia. Nor need we fear to admit, 
that, mingled with the darkest errors, Buddhism contained 
elements of truth so undeniably powerful as to appeal with 
great force to some of the noblest aspirations of the soul of 
man‘ But Buddhism, vast as is the population which professes 
it, has not yet made its way into a second continent; while the 
religion of Jesus Christ is to be found in every quarter of the 
globe. As for the rapid and widespread growth of the religion 
of the False Prophet, it may be explained, partly by the practical 
genius of. Mohammed, partly by the rare qualities of the Arab 
race. If it had not claimed to be a new revelation, Moham- 
medanism might have passed for a heresy adroitly constructed 
out of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Its doctrine re- 
specting Jesus Christ reaches the level of Socinianism ; and, as 
against Polytheism, its speculative force lay in its insistance upon 
the truth of the Divine Unity. A religion which consecrated 


ο The well-known words of the Emile are these: ‘Jamais des auteurs juifs 
n’eussent trouvé ce ton ni cette morale; et l’Evangile a des caractéres de 
vérité si grands, si frappants, si parfaitement inimitables, que l’inventeur en 
serait plus étonnant que le héros.’ 

P Cf. on this point the interesting Essay of M. Taine, Etudes Critiques, 
p. 321. 
4 Cf. Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, pp. 142-148. Yet M. St. 
Hilaire describes Buddhism as presenting ‘un spiritualisme sans Ame, une 
vertu sans devoir, une morale sans liberté, une charité sans amour, un monde 
sans nature et sans Dieu.’ “Ib. p. 182. 

11 | 


134 Success of false religions and of ( hristianity. 


sensual indulgence could bid high for an Asiatic popularity 
against the Church of Christ; and Mohammed delivered the 
scymetar, as the instrument of his.apostolate, into the hands of 
a people whose earlier poetry shews it to have been gifted with 
intellectual fire and strength of purpose of the highest order. 
But it has not yet been asserted that the Church fought her. 
way, sword in hand, to the throne of Constantine ; nor were the 
first Christians naturally calculated to impose their will forcibly 
upon the civilized world, had they ever desired to do so. Still 
less is a parallel to the work of Jesus Christ to be found in that 
of Confucius. Confucius indeed was not a warrior like Moham- 
med, nor a mystic like GCakya-Mouni; he appealed neither to 
superior knowledge nor to miraculous power. Confucius col- 
lected, codified, enforced, reiterated all that was most elevated in 
the moral traditions of China; he was himself deeply penetrated 
with the best ethical sentiments of Chinese antiquity™. His 
success was that of an earnest patriot who was also, as a patriot, 
an antiquarian moralist. . But he succeeded only in China, nor 
could his work roll back that invasion of Buddhism which took 
place in the first century of the Christian era. Confucianism 
is more purely national than Buddhism and Mohamme- 
danism ; and in this respect it contrasts more sharply with 
the world-wide presence of Christianity. Yet if Confucianism is 
unknown beyond the frontiers of China, it is equally true that 
neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism have done more than 
spread themselves. over territories contiguous to their original 
homes. Whereas, almost within the first century of her exist- 
ence, the Church had her missionaries in Spain on one hand, 
and, as it seems, in India on the other; and her Apostle pro- 
claimed that his Master’s cause was utterly independent of all. 
distinctions of race and nation’. In our own day, Christian 
charity is freely spending its energies and its blood in efforts to 
carry the work of Jesus Christ into regions where He has been 
so stoutly resisted by these ancient and highly organized forms 
of error. Yet in the streets of London or of Paris we do not 
hear of the labours of Moslem or Buddhist missionaries, instinct 
with any such sense of a duty and mission to all the world in the 
name of truth, as that which animates, at this very hour, those 
heroic pioneers of Christendom whom Europe has sent to Delhi 
or to Pekin t. 

τ Cf. Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 308. 

5. Col. iii. 11; Rom. i. 14. 

t We are indeed told that ‘if we were to judge from the history of ΓΝ last 

LECT. - 


Pm | 


Gibbon’s account of the success of Fesus Christ. 135 


2. From the. earliest ages of the Church, the rapid progress 
of Christianity in the face of apparently insurmountable diffi- 
culties, has attracted attention, on the score of its high evidential 
value%. The accomplished but unbelieving historian of the De- 
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire undertook to furnish the 
scepticism of the last century with a systematized and altogether 
natural account of the spread of Christianity V. The five ‘ causes’ 
which he instances as sufficient to explain the work of Jesus 
Christ in the world are, the ‘zeal’ of the early Christians, the 
‘doctrine of a future life,’ the ‘miraculous powers ascribed to 
the primitive Church,’ the ‘pure and austere morals of the first 
Christians,’ and ‘the union and discipline of the Christian 
republic.’ But surely each of these causes. points at once and 
irresistibly to a cause beyond itselfx. If the zeal of the first 
Christians was, as Gibbon will have it, a fanatical habit of mind 
inherited from Judaism, how came it not merely to survive, but 
to acquire a new intensity, when the narrow nationalism which 
provoked it in the Jew had been wholly renounced? What was 
it that made the first Christians so zealous amid surrounding 
lassitude, so holy amid encompassing pollution? Why should 
the doctrine of a life to come have had a totally different. effect 
when proclaimed by the Apostles from any which it had had 
when taught by Socrates or by Plato, or by other thinkers of the 
Pagan world? How came it that a few peasants and tradesmen 
could erect a world-wide organization, sufficiently elastic to 
adapt itself to the genius of races the most various, sufficiently 
uniform to be everywhere visibly conservative of its unbroken 
identity ? If the miracles of the early Church, or any one of 
them, were genuine, how can they avail to explain the natwral- 
ness of the spread of Christianity? If they were all false, how 


thousand years, it would appear to shew that the permanent area of Chris- 
tianity is conterminous with that of Western civilization, and that its doctrines 
could find acceptance only among those who, by incorporation into the Greek 
and Latin races, have adopted their system of life and morals.’ International 
Policy, p. 508. The Anglo-Positivist school however is careful to explain 
that it altogether excludes Russia from any share in ‘ Western civilization ;’ 
Russia, it appears, is quite external to ‘the West.’ Ibid. pp. 14-17, 58, 
95, &c. 3 . 

υ St. Justin. Dialog. cum Tryph. 117, 121; St.JIrenzeus, adv. Heer. i. c. 10, 
§ 2; Tertull. adv. Judzos, vii; Apolog. 37; Orig. contr. Celsum, i. 26, 
ii. 79. Cf. Freppel, Examen Critique, p. 110. 

Y No reader of Gibbon will be misled by the sarcasm of the opening para-— 
graphs of Decl. and Fall, c. xv. Would that Gibbon had really supposed 
himself to be describing only the ‘secondary causes’ of the progress of Chris- 
tianity ! x Kclipse of Faith, p. 186. 

III | 


136 Leecent theory of the success of our Lord. ~ 


extraordinary is this spectacle of a moral triumph, such as even 
Gibbon acknowledges that-of Christianity to be, brought about by 
means of a vast and odious imposition ἢ Gibbon’s argument would 
have been more conclusive if the ‘causes’ to which he points 
could themselves have been satisfactorily accounted for in a 
natural way. As it was, the historian of Lausanne did an in- 
direct service to Christendom, of that kind for which England 
has sometimes been indebted to the threatening preparations of 
a great military neighbour. Gibbon indicated very clearly the 
direction which would be taken by modern assailants of the 
faith ; but he is not singular in having strengthened the cause 
which he sought to ruin, by furnishing an indirect demonstration 
of the essentially supernatural character of the spread of the 
Gospel. 

3. But you remind me that if the sceptical artillery of Gibbon 
is out of date, yet the ‘higher criticism’ of our day has a more 
delicate, and, as is presumed, a more effective method of stating 
the naturalistic explanation of the work of Jesus Christ in the 
world. Jesus Christ, you say, was born at a time when the 
world itself forced victory upon Him, or at least ensured for 
Him an easy triumphy. The wants and aspirations of a worn- 
out civilization, the dim but almost universal presentiment of 
a coming Restorer of mankind, the completed organization of a 
great world-empire, combined to do this. You urge that it is 
possible so to correspond to the moral and intellectual drift of 
a particular period, that nothing but a perverse stupidity can 
escape a success which is all but inevitable. You add that Jesus 
Christ ‘had this chance’ of appearing at a critical moment in 
the history of humanity ; and that when the world was ripe for 
His religion, He and His Apostles had just adroitness enough 
not to be wholly unequal to the opportunity. The report of His 
teaching and of His Person was carried on the crest of one of 
those waves of strange mystic enthusiasm, which so often during 
the age of the Cesars rolled westward from Asia towards the 
capital of the world; and though the Founder of Christianity, it 
is true, had perished in the surf, His work, you hold, in the 
nature of things, could not but survive Him. 


y Renan, Les Apdtres, pp. 302, 303. M. Renan is of opinion that ‘la 
conversion du monde aux idées juives(!) et chrétiennes était inévitable;’ 
his only astonishment is that ‘ cette conversion se soit fait si lentement et si 
tard.’ On the other hand, the new faith is said to have made ‘de proche en 
proche @’étonnantes progres’ (Ibid. p. 215); and, with reference to Antioch, 
‘on s'étonne des progres accomplis en si peu de temps.’ Ibid. p. 236. 
LECT. 


Was our Lord’s triumph due to Fudaism? 134 


_ (a) In this representation, my brethren, there is a partial 
truth which I proceed to recognise. It is true that the world 
was weary and _ expectant ; it is true that the political fabric of 
the great empire afforded to the Gospel the same facilities for 
self-extension as those which it offered to the religion of Osiris, 
or to the fable of Apollonius Tyanzus. But those favourable , 
circumstances are only what we should look for at the hands of 
a Divine Providence, when the true religion was to be introduced 
into the world ; and they are altogether unequal to account for 
the success of Christianity. It is alleged that Christianity cor- 
responded to the dominant moral and mental tendencies 2 of the 
time so perfectly, that those tendencies secured its triumph. 
But is this accurate? Christianity was cradled in Judaism ; 
but was the later Judaism so entirely in harmony with the 
temper and aim of Christianity? Was the age of the Zealots, of 
Judas the Gaulonite, of Theudas, likely to welcome the spiritual 
empire of such a teacher as our Lord®? Were the moral dispo- 
sitions of the Jews, their longings for a political Messiah, their ‘ 
fierce legalism, their passionate jealousy for the prerogatives of 
their race, calculated—I do not say to further the triumph of 
the Church, but—to enter even distantly into her distinctive 
spirit and doctrines? Did not the Synagogue persecute Jesus 
to death, when it had once discerned the real character of His 
teaching? It may be argued that the favourable dispositions in 
question which made the success of Christianity practically 
inevitable were to be: found among the Hellenistic Jews». The 
Hellenistic Jews were less cramped by national prejudices, less 
strictly observant of the Mosaic ceremonies, more willing to 
welcome Gentile proselytes than was the case with the Jews of 
Palestine. Be it so. But the Hellenistic Jews were just as 
opposed as the Jews of Palestine to the capital truths of Chris- 
tianity. A crucified Messiah, for instance, was not a more wel- 
come doctrine in the synagogues of Corinth or of Thessalonica 
than in those of Jerusalem. Never was Judaism broader, more 
elastic, more sympathetic with external thought, more disposed 
to make concessions than in Philo Judeus, the most representa- 
tive of Hellenistic Jews. Yet Philo insists as stoutly as any 
Palestinian Rabbi upon the perpetuity of the law of Moses. As 
long, he says, as the human race shall endure, men shall carry 


z Renan, Les Apdtres, 6. 19, pp. 366, sqq. 
® Freppel, Examen Critique, p. 114. 
b Renan, Les ES ἃ 105 Pe 173. 


111 | 


= 


138 Was Christ's triumph due to Femish sympathy? 


their offerings to the temple of Jerusalem¢. Indeed in the first 
age of Christianity the Jews, both Palestinian and Hellenistic, 
illustrate, unintentionally of course, but very remarkably, the 
supernatural law of the expansion of the Church. They perse- 
cute Christ in His members, and yet they submit to Him; they 
are foremost in enriching the Church with converts, after en- 
riching her with martyrs. Wherever the preachers of the Gospel 
appear, it is the Jews who are their fiercest persecutors4; the 
Jews rouse against them the passions of the Pagan mob, or 
appeal to the prejudice of the Pagan magistratee. Yet the 
synagogue is the mission-station from which the Church’s action 
originally radiates; the synagogue, as a rule, yields their first 
spiritual conquests to the soldiers of the Cross. In the Acts of 
the Apostles we remark on the one hand the hatred and opposi- 
tion with which the Jew met the advancing Gospel, on the other, 
the signal and rapid conquests of the Gospel among the ranks of 
the-Jewish population‘, The former fact determines the true 
significance of the latter. Men do not persecute systems which 
answer to their real sympathies; St. Paul was not a Christian 
at heart, and without intending it, before his conversion. The 
Church triumphed in spite of the dominant tendencies and the 
fierce opposition of Judaism, both in Palestine and elsewhere ; 
she triumphed by the force of her inherent and Divine vitality. 
The process whereby the Gospel won its way among the Jewish 
people was typified in St. Paul’s experience; the passage from 
the traditions of the synagogue to the faith of Pentecost cost 
nothing less than a violent moral and intellectual wrench, such 
as could be achieved only by a supernatural force, interrupting 


© De Monarchi, lib. ii. § 3, ii. 224: ἐφ᾽ ὅσον γὰρ τὸ ἀνθρώπων γένος δια- 
μενεῖ, del καὶ af πρόσοδοι τοῦ ἱεροῦ φυλαχθήσονται συνδιαινωνίζουσαι παντὶ τῷ 
κόσμῳ : quoted by Freppel. ; 

¢ How far St. Paul thought that Judaism contributed to the triumph of 
the Church might appear from 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. Compare Acts xiii. 50, 
Xiv. §, 19, XVil. 5, 13, XVili. I2, xix. 9, Xxii. 21, 22. 

9. Renan, Les Apétres, p. 143: ‘Ce qu’il importe, en tout cas, de remar- 
quer, c’est qu’& ’époque ot nous sommes, les persécuteurs du Christianisme 
ne sont pas les Romains; ce sont les Juifs orthodoxes. . . C’était Rome, 
ainsi que nous l’avons déj& plusieurs fois remarqué, qui empéchait le Judaisme 
de se livrer pleinement & ses instincts d’intolérance, et d’étonffer les dé- 
veloppements libres qui se produisaient dans son sein. Toute diminution de 
Yautorité juive était un bienfait pour la secte naissante.’ (p. 251.) See 
Martyr. St. Polyc. c. 13. ᾿ 

f Acts vi. 7. This one text disposes of Μ. Renan’s assertion as to the 
growth of the Church, that ‘les orthodoxes rigides s’y prétaient peu.’ 
Apdotres, p. 113. 


[ nEcr. 


\ 


Was Christ's triumph due to Pagan aspirations? 139 


the old stream of thought and feeling and introducing a new 
one. 

(8) But if success was not forced upon the Christian Church 
by the dispositions and attitude of Judaism ; can it be said that 
Paganism supplies us with the true explanation of the triamph 
of the Gospel? What then were those intellectual currents, 
those moral ideals, those movements, those aspirations, discover- 
able in the Paganism of the age of the Cesars, which were in 
such effective alliance with the doctrine and morality of the New 
Testament? What was the general temper of Pagan intellect, 
but a self-asserting, cynical scepticism? Pagan intellect speaks 
in orators like Cicerog; publicly deriding the idea of rewards and 
punishments hereafter, and denying the intervention of a higher 
Power in the. affairs of men!; or it speaks in statesmen like 
Cesar, proclaiming from his place in the Roman senate that the 
soul does not exist after deathi; or in historians like Tacitus, 
repudiating with self-confident disdain the-idea of a providential 
government of the worldj; or in poets like Horace, making 
profession of the practical Atheism of the school of Epicurus, it 
is hard to say, whether in jest or in earnestk; or in men of 
science like Strabo! and Pliny™, maintaining that religion is 
a governmental device for keeping the passions of the lower 
orders under restraint, and that the soul’s.immortality is a mere 
dream or nursery-story. ‘Unbelief in the official religion,’ says 
M. Renan, ‘was prevalent throughout the educated class. The very 
statesmen who most ostentatiously upheld the public worship of 
the empire made very amusing epigrams at its expense®.’ What 
was the moral and social condition of Roman Paganism ξ΄ 
Modern unbelief complains that St. Paul has characterized the 
social morality of the Pagan world in terms of undue severity 9, 


8 Cicero however, in his speculative moods, was the ‘only Roman who 
undertook to rest a real individual existence of souls after death on philo- 
sophical grounds.’ Déollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. viii. § 3. 

- h Cic. pro Cluentio, c. 61; De Nat. Deor. iii. 32; De Off. iii. 28; De 
Divin. ii. 17. 

i Sallust. Catilin. 50-52. 

i Tacitus, Ann. xvi. 33, vi. 22. Yet see Hist. i. 3, iv. 78. 

k Hor. Sat. i. 5, 100, sq.; cf. Lucret. v. 83, vi. 57, 56. 

1 Geogr. i. c. 2; cf. Polyb. Hist. Gen. vi. 56. ᾿ 

m Plin. vii. 55. 

n Renan, Les Apétres, pp. 340, 341. 

° Ibid. p. 309, note 1: ‘ L’opinion beaucoup trop sévére de Saint Paul 
(Rom. i. 24 et suiv.) s’explique de la méme manitre. Saint Paul ne connais- 
sait pas la haute société Romaine. Ce sont la, d’ailleurs, de ces invectives 


II | 


140 Moral characteristics of the Pagan world 


Yet St. Paul does not exceed the specific charges of Tacitus, of 
Suetonius, of Juvenal, of Seneca, that is to say, of writers who, 
at least, had no theological interest in misrepresenting or exagge- 
rating the facts which - they deploreP. When Tacitus summarizes 
the moral condition of Paganism by his exhaustive phrase 
‘corrumpere et corrump, he more than covers the sorrowlng 
invective of the Apostle. Indeed our modern historian of the 
Apostolic age, who sees nothing miraculous in the success of the 
Gospel4, has himself characterized the moral condition of the 
Pagan world in terms yet more severe than those of the Apostle 
whom he condemns. According to M. Renan, Rome under the 
Ceesars ‘became a school of immorality and cruelty’;’ it was a 
‘very hells ;’ ‘the reproach that Rome had poisoned the world 
at large, the Apocalyptic comparison of Pagan Rome to a prosti- 
tute who had poured forth upon the earth the wine of her 
immoralities, was in many respects a just comparisont.’ Nor 
was the moral degradation of Paganism confined to the capital 


comme en font les prédicateurs, et qu’il ne faut jamais prendre ἃ la lettre.’ 
Do the Satires of Juvenal lead us to suppose that if St. Paul had ‘known 
the high society of Rome,’ he would have used a less emphatic language? 
And is it a rule with preachers, whether Apostolic or post-Apostolic, not to 
mean what they say? ; 

P Juvenal, Sat. i. 87, ii. 37, iii. 62, vi. 293. Seneca, Epist. xcvii.; De 
Benefic. i. 9, iii. 16. Tacitus, Hist. i. 2; Germ. xix. See other quotations 
in Wetstein, Nov. Test. in loc. It may be that Tacitus, in his affection for 
the old regime of the republic, was tempted to exaggerate the sins of the 
empire, and that Juvenal dwelt upon the vices of the capital with somewhat 
of the narrow prejudice of provincialism. Still, after allowing for this, there 
is a groundwork of fact in these representations which amply justifies 
St. Paul. 

a4 Renan, Les Apdtres, p. 366: ‘Tel était le monde que les missionaires 
chrétiens entreprirent de convertir. On doit voir maintenant, ce me semble, 
qu’une telle entreprise ne fut pas une a et que sa réussite ne fut pas un 
miracle.’ 

τ Ibid. p. 305. 

5 Ibid. p.310: ‘ L’esprit de vertige et de cruauté débordait alors, et faisait 
de Rome un véritable enfer.’ P. 317: ‘A Rome, il est vrai, tous les vices 
s’affichaient avec un cynisme révoltant ; les spectacles surtout avaient intro- 
duit une affreuse corruption.’ This statement is not an exaggeration. See 
Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. ix. pt. ii. § 3, 4, pp. 704-721. 

t Ibid. p. 325: ‘Le reproche d’avoir empoisonné la terre, l’assimilation de 
Rome ἃ une courtisane qui a versé au monde le vin de son immoralité était 
juste & beaucoup d’égards.’ Yet M. Renan is so little careful about contra- 
dicting himself that he elsewhere says, ‘ Le monde, ἃ |’époque Romaine, ac- 
complit un progrés de moralité et subit une décadence scientifique.’ (p. 326.) 
The nature of this progress seems to have been somewhat Epicurean: ‘Le 
monde s’assouplissait, perdait sa rigeur antique, acquérait de la mollesse, et 
de la sensibilité.’ (p. 318.) 

[ LECT. 


contrasted with the teaching of the Gospel. 141 


of the great empire. The provinces were scarcely purer than 
the capital. Each province poured its separate contribution of 
moral filth into the great store which the increasing centraliza- 
tion of the empire had accumulated in the main reservoir at 
Rome ; each province in turn received its share of this recipro- 
cated corruption¥. In particular, the East, that very portion of 
the empire in which the Gospel took its rise, was the main 
source of the common infection’. Antioch was itself a centre of 
moral putrefaction¥. Egypt was one of the most corrupt 
countries in the world; and the saine account might be given 
generally: of those districts and cities of the empire in which the 
Church first made her way, of Greece, and Asia Minor, and 
Roman Africa, of Ephesus and Corinth, of Alexandria and Car- 
thage. ‘The middle of the first century of our era was, in point 
of fact, one of the worst epochs of ancient history *.’ 

But was such an epoch, such a world, such a ‘civilization’ 
as this calculated to ‘force success’ on an institution like 
‘the kingdom of heaven,’ or on a doctrine such as that of 
the New Testament? If indeed Christianity had been an ‘idyll’ 
or ‘pastoral,’ the product of the simple peasant life and of 
the bright sky of Galilee, there is no reason why it should 
not have attracted a momentary interest in literary circles, 
although it certainly would have escaped from any more serious 
trial at the hands of statesmen than an unaffected indifference 
to its popularity. But what was the Gospel as it met the 
eye and fell upon the ear of Roman Paganism? ‘We preach,’ 
said the Apostle, ‘Christ Crucified, to the Jews an offence, 
and to the Greeks a follyy.’ ‘I determined not to know any- 
thing among you Corinthians, save Jesus Christ, and Him 


" Les Apétres, p. 326: ‘La province valait mieux que Rome, ou plutét 
les éléments impurs qui de toutes parts s’amassaient 4 Rome, comme en un 
égotit, avaient formé Ἰὰ un foyer d’infection.’ 

v Ibid. p. 305: ‘ Le mal venait surtout de l’Orient, de ces flatteurs de bas 
étage, de ces hommes infimes que l’Egypte et la Syrie envoyaient ἃ Rome.’ 
P. 306: ‘Les plus choquantes ignominies de l’empire, telles que Papothéose 
de l’empereur, sa divinisation de son vivant, venaient de l’Orient, et surtout 
de Egypte, qui était alors un des pays les plus corrumpus de l’ univers.’ 

w Ibid. p. 218: ‘ La légéreté Syrienne, le charlatanisme Babylonien, toutes 
les impostures de |’ Asie, se confondant ἃ cette limite des deux mondes avaient 
fait d’Antioche la capitale du mensonge, Ja sentine de toutes les infamies.’ 
P. 219: ‘ L’avilissement des Ames y était effroyable. Le propre de ces foyers 
de putréfaction morale, c est d amener toutes les races aw méme niveau.’ 

x Ibid. p. 343. 

γι Cor.i. 23: ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρουμένον, ᾿Ιουδαίοις μὲν 
σκάνδαλον, Ἕλλησι δὲ μωρίαν. 
ul | 


142 The Spirit of Paganism and Fesus C rucified. 


Crucified 2.’ Here was a truth linked inextricably with other 
truths equally ‘foolish’ in the apprehension of Pagan intellect, 
equally condemnatory of the moral degradation of Pagan life. 
In the preaching of the Apostles, Jesus Crucified confronted the 
intellectual cynicism, the social selfishness, and the sensualist 
degradation of the Pagan world. To its intellect He said, 
‘IT am the truth®;’ He bade its proud self-confidence bow 
before His intellectual Royalty. To its selfish, heartless society, 
careful. only for bread and amusement, careless of the agonies 
which gave interest to the amphitheatre, He said, ‘A new 
commandment give 1 unto you, that ye love one another, 
as I have loved you.’ Disinterested love of slaves, of bar- 
barians, of political enemies, of social rivals, love οἵ man as 
man, was to be a test of true discipleship. And to the sen- 
suality, so gross, and yet often so polished, which was the 
very law of individual Pagan life, He said, ‘If any man will 
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
daily, and follow Mec;’ ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it. 
out and cast it from thee; it is better for thee that one of 
thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body 
should be cast into hell4.’ Sensuality was to be dethroned, 
not by the negative action of a prudential abstinence from 
indulgence, but by the strong positive force of self-mortification. 
Was such a doctrine likely, of its own weight and_ without 
any assistance from on high, to win its way to acceptance ¢? 
Is it not certain that debased souls are so far from aspiring 
naturally towards that which is holy, elevated and pure, that 
they feel towards it only hatred and repulsion? Certainly Rome 
was unsatisfied with her old national idolatries; but if she 
turned her eyes towards the East, it was not to welcome 
the religion of Jesus, but the impure rites of Isis and Serapis, 
of Mithra and Astarte. The Gospel came to her unbidden, 
in obedience to no assignable attraction in Roman society, 
but simply in virtue of its own expansive, world-embracing 
force. Certainly Christianity answered to the moral wants 
of the world, as it really answers at this moment to the 


2 1 Cor. ii. 2: od γὰρ ἔκρινα Tod εἰδέναι τι ἐν ὑμῖν, εἰ μὴ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, 
καὶ ταῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον. a St. John xiv. 6. 

> Tbid. xiii. 34. ¢ St. Matt. xvi. 24; St. Mark viii. 34, 

4 St. Matt. xviii. 9; St. Mark ix. 47. | 

9. M. Renan himself observes that ‘la dégradation des 4mes en Egypte 
y rendait rares, dailleurs, les aspirations qui ouvrirent partout (!) au 
christianisme de si faciles accés.’ Les Apdtres, p. 284. | 


[ LECT, 


Attitude of Pagan Society towards the Church. 143 


true moral wants of all human beings, however unbelieving 
or immoral they may be. The question is, whether the world 
so clearly recognised its real wants as forthwith to embrace 
Christianity. The Physician was there; but did the patient 
know the nature of his own malady sufficiently well not to 
view the presence of the Physician as an intrusion? Was it 
likely that the old Roman society, with its intellectual. pride, 
its social heartlessness, and its unbounded personal self-indul- 
gence, should be enthusiastically in love with a religion which 
made intellectual submission, social unselfishness, and personal 
mortification, its very fundamental laws? The history of the 
three first centuries is the answer to that question. The 
kingdom of God was no sooner set up in the Pagan world 
than it found itself surrounded by all that combines to make 
the progress of a doctrine or of a system impossible. The 
thinkers were opposed to it: they denounced it as a dream 
of follyf. The habits and passions of the people were opposed 
to it: it threatened somewhat rudely to interfere with them. 
There were venerable institutions, coming down from a distant 
antiquity, and gathering around them the stable and thoughtful 
elements of society: these were opposed to it, as to an audacious 
innovation, as well as from an instinctive perception that it 
might modify or destroy themselves. National feeling was 
opposed to it: it flattered no national self-love; it was to 
be the home of human kind; it was to embrace the world ; 
and as yet the nation was the highest conception of associated 
life to which humanity had reached. Nay, religious feeling 
itself was opposed to it; for religious feeling had been enslaved 
by ancient falsehoods. There were worships, priesthoods, be- 
liefs, in long-established possession; and they were not likely 
to yield without a struggle. Picture to yourselves the days 
when the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter was still thronged 
with worshippers, while often the Eucharist could only be 
celebrated in the depths of the Catacombs. It was a time 
when all the administrative power of the empire was steadily 
concentrated upon the extinction of the Name of Christ. What 
were then to a human eye the future prospects of the kingdom 
of God? It had no allies, like the sword of the Mahommedan, 


f Tac. Ann. xv. 44: ‘ Repressa in presens exitiabilis superstitio rursus 
erumpebat.’ Suetonius, Claudius, xxv. ; Nero, xvi.: ‘Christiani, genus 
hominum superstitionis nove ac malefice. Celsus apud Origenem, iii. 17. 
Celsus compared the Church’s worship of our Lord with the Egyptian 
worship of cats, crocodiles, &c. 
ri | 


144 TheChurch triumphs through persistent suffering. 


or like the congenial mysticism which weleomed the Buddhist, 
or like the politicians who strove to uphold the falling Paganism 
of Rome. It found no countenance even in the Stoic moral- 
ists&; they were indeed among its fiercest enemies. If, as 
M. Renan maintains, it ever was identified by Pagan opinion, . 
with the cetus wlcitt, with the collegia wlicita, with the burial- 
clubs of the imperial epoch; this would only have rendered 
it more than ever an object of suspicion to. the government ἢ, 
Between the new doctrine and the old Paganism there was 
a deadly feud; and the question for the Church was simply 
whether she could suffer as long as her enemies could persecute. 
Before she could triumph in the western world, the soil of 
the empire had to be reddened by Christian blood. Ignatius 
of Antioch given to the lions at Romei; Polycarp of Smyrna 
condemned to the flames*; the martyrs ‘of Lyons and Vienne, 
and among them the tender Blandina!, extorting by her for- 
titude the admiration of the very heathen ; Perpetua and 
Felicitas at Carthage ™ conquering a mother’s love by a stronger 
love for Christ ;—these are but samples of the ‘noble army’ 
which vanquished heathendom. ‘Plures efficimur,’ cries Ter- 
tullian, spokesman of the Church in her exultation and in 
her agony, ‘‘quoties metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis 


& Ddllinger, Heidenth. und Judenth., bk. ix. pt. 2. 8. 6. has some very 
interesting remarks on the characteristics of the later Stoicism. It was 
a recoil from the corruption of the time. ‘ Wie die Aerzte in Zeiten grosser 
Krankheiten ihre besten Studien machen, so hatten auch die Stoiker in 
dem allgemein herrschenden Sittenverderben ihren moralischen | Blick 
geschirft,’ p. 729. Seneca’s knowledge of the human heart, the pathos 
and solemnity of M. Aurelius, the self-control, patience, and self-denying 
courage preached by Epictetus and Arrian, are fully acknowledged. But 
Stoicism was virtue upon paper, unrealized except in the instance of a 
few coteries of educated people. It was virtue, affecting Divine strength 
in the midst of human weakness. Nothing could really be done for 
humanity by ‘diesen selbstgefalligen Tugendstolz, der alles nur sich selbst 
verdanken wollte, der sich der Gottheit gleich setzte, und bei aller men- 
schlichen Gebrechlichkeit doch die Sicherheit der Gottheit fiir sich in 
Anspruch nahm.’ (Sen. Ep. 53.) Stoicism had no lever with which 
to raise man as man from his degradations: and its earlier expositors 
even prescribed suicide as a means of escape from the miseries of life, and 
from a sense of moral failure. (Déll. ubi supra, p. 728; comp. Sir A. Grant’s 
Ethics of Arist. vol. i. p. 272.) Who can marvel at its instinctive hatred 
of a religion which proclaimed a higher code of Ethics than its own, and 
which, moreover, possessed tke secret of teaching that code practically to 
all classes of mankind ? 

h Les Apdtres, pp. 355, 361, 565: i A.D, 107. 

Κα, D. 169. -D. 177. ™ A.D. 202. 


[ LECT. 


Christ's Person the stay of the suffering Church. 145 


Christianorum®.’ To the heathen it seems a senseless obstinacy; 
but with a presentiment of the coming victory, the Apologist 
exclaims, ‘Illa ipsa obstinatio quam exprobatis, magistra est °.’ 
Who was He That had thus created a moral force which could 
embrace three centuries of a protracted agony, in the confidence 
that victory would come at lastP?? What was it in Him, so 
fascinating and sustaining to the thought of His followers, that 
for Him men and women of all ages and ranks in life gladly 
sacrificed all that is dearest to man’s heart and nature? Was it 
only His miracles? But the evidential force of miracle may be 
easily evaded. St. John’s Gospel appears to have been written 
with a view to furnishing, among other things, an authoritative | 
explanation of the moral causes which actually prevented the 
Jews from recognising the significance of our Lord’s miracles. 
Was it simply His character? But to understand a perfect 
character you must be attracted to it, and have some strong 
sympathies with it. And the language of human nature in the 
presence of superior goodness is often that of the Epicurean in 
the Book of Wisdom: ‘Let us le in wait for the righteous, 
because he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our 
doings..... He was made to reprove our thoughts; he is 
grievous unto us even to behold; for his life is not like other 
men’s, his ways are of another fashion4.’ Was it His teaching ἢ 
True, never man spake like this Man; but taken alone, the 
highest and holiest teaching might have seemed to humanity to 
be no more than ‘the sound of one that had a pleasant: voice, 
and could play well upon an instrument.’ His Death? Certainly 
He predicted that in dying He would draw all men unto Him ; 
_ but Who was He That could thus turn the instrument of His 
humiliation into the certificate of His glory? His Resurrection ? 
His Resurrection indeed was emphatically to be the reversal of 
. a false impression, but it was to witness to a truth beyond itself; 
our Lord had expressly predicted that He would rise from the 
grave, and that His Resurrection would attest His claims?. 
None of these things taken separately will account for the power 
of Christ in history. In the convergence of all these ; of these 
majestic miracles ; of that Character, which commands at once 


n Apol. 1. ο Thid. 

P M. Renan observes scornfully, ‘Il n’y a pas eu beaucoup de martyrs 
trés-intelligents.’ Apdtres, p. 382. Possibly not, if intelligence is but another 
name for scepticism. Certain it is that martyrdom requires other and higher 
qualities than any which mere intelligence can supply. . 

4 Wisd, ii. 12, 15. * St. Matt. xii. 39 ; Rom. i. 4. 

111 | L , 


146 Christendom implies the Divinity of Christ. 


our love and our reverence ; of that teaching, so startling, so 
awful, so searching, so tender-; of that Death of agony, encircled 
with such a halo of moral glory ; of that deserted tomb, and the 
majestic splendour of the Risen One ;—a deeper truth, underlying 
all, justifying all, explaining all, is seen to reveal itself. We . 
discern, as did the first Christians, beneath and beyond all that 
meets the eye of sense and the eye of conscience, the Eternal 
Person of our Lord Himself. It is not. the miracles, but the 
Worker ; not the character, but its living Subject; not the 
teaching, but the Master; not even the Death or the Resurrec- 
tion, but He Who died and rose, upon Whom Christian thought, 
Christian love, Christian resolution ultimately rest. The truth 
which really and only accounts for the establishment in this our 
human world of such a religion as Christianity, and of such an 
institution as the Church, is the truth that Jesus Christ was 
believed to be more than Man, the truth that Jesus Christ is 
what men believed Him to be, the truth that Jesus Christ 
is God. 

It is here that we are enabled duly to estimate one broad 
feature of the criticism of Strauss. Both in his earlier and 
scientific work, published some thirty years ago for scholars, and 
in his more recent publication addressed to the German people, 
that writer strips Jesus Christ our Lord of all that makes Him 
superhuman. Strauss eliminates from the Gospel most of Christ’s 
discourses, all of His miracles, His supernatural Birth, and His 
Resurrection from the grave. The so-termed ‘historical’ resi- 
duum might easily be compressed within the limits of a newspaper 
paragraph, and it retains nothing that can rouse a moderate 
measure, I do not say of enthusiasm, but even of interest, And 
yet few minds on laying down either of these unhappy books 
can escape the rising question: ‘Is this hero of a baseless legend, 
this impotent, fallible, erring Christ of the “higher criticism,” in 
very deed the Founder of the Christian Church?’ The difficulty 
of accounting for the phenomenon presented by the Church, on 
the supposition that the ‘historical’ account of its Founder is 
that of Dr. Strauss, does not present itself forcibly to an Hege- 
lian, who loses himself in ἃ priori theories as to the necessary 
development of a thought, and is thus entranced in a sublime 
forgetfulness of the actual facts and laws of human life and his- 
tory. But here M. Renan is unwittingly a witness against the 
writer to whom he is mainly indebted for his own critical appa- 
ratus. The finer political instinct, the truer sense of the necessary 
proportions between causes and effects in human 7 

LECT. 


Lhe Christ of S trauss, and Christendom. 147 


might be expected to characterize a thoughtful Frenchman, will 
account for those points in which M. Renan has departed from 
the path traced by his master. He feels that there is an impas- 
sable chasm between the life of Jesus according to Strauss, and 
the actual history of Christendom. He is keenly alive to the 
absurdity of supposing that such an impoverished Christ as the 
Christ of Strauss, can have created Christendom. Although 
therefore, as we have seen, he subsequently 5 endeavours to account 
for the growth of the Church in a naturalistic way, his native 
sense of the fitting proportions of things impels him to retouch 
the picture traced by the German, and to ascribe to Jesus of 
Nazareth, if not the reality, yet some shadowy semblance of 
Divinity *. Hence such features of M.Renan’s work as his 
concessions in respect of St. John’s Gospel. In making these 
concessions, he is for the moment impressed with the political 
absurdity of ascribing Christendom to the thought and will of a 
merely human Christ. Although his unbelief is too radical to 
allow him to do adequate justice to such a consideration, his 
indirect admission of its force has a value, to which Christian 
believers will not be insensible. | 

But a greater than M. Renan is said to have expressed the 
common-sense of mankind in respect of the Agency which alone 
can account for the existence of the Christian Church. If the 
first Napoleon was not a theologian, he was at least a man whom 
_ vast experience had taught what kind of forces can really produce 
a lasting effect upon mankind, and under what conditions they 
may be expected to do so. A time came when the good Provi- 
dence of God had chained down that great but ambitious spirit 
to the rock of St. Helena ; and the conqueror of civilized Europe 
had leisure to gather up the results of his unparalleled life, and 
to ascertain with an accuracy, not often attainable by monarchs 
or conquerors, his own true place in history. When conversing, 
as was his habit, about the great men of the ancient world, and 
comparing himself with them, he turned, it is said, to Count 
Montholon with the enquiry, ‘Can you tell me who Jesus Christ 
was?’ The question was declined, and Napoleon proceeded, 
‘Well, then, I will tell you. Alexander, Cesar, Charlemagne, 
and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did 
these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone 
founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions 
would die for Him..... I think I understand something of 


. 5 In his later work, Les Apétres. t Vie de Jésus, pp. 250, 426, 457. 
III | L 2 


148 Ofpznion of Napoleon the First respecting the 


human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a 
man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. 
.. 1 have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion 
that they would have died for me,.. but ‘to do this it was ne- 
cessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence 
of my looks, of my words, of my voice. When I saw men and 
spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their 
hearts. . .. Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of Ὁ 
man towards the Unseen, that it becomes insensible to the 
barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred 
years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others 
difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may 
often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his 
children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He 
asks for the human heart ; He will have it entirely to Himself. 
He demands it unconditionally ; and forthwith His demand is 
granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of 
man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to 
the empire of Christ, All who sincerely believe in Him, ex- 
perience that remarkable supernatural love towards Him. This 
phenomenon is unaccountable ; it is altogether beyond the scope 
of man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless 
to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its 
strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it which strikes 
me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves 
to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ 4,’ 


u This is freely translated from the passages quoted by Luthardt, Apolo. 
getische Vortrige, pp. 234, 293; and Bersier, Serm. p, 334. The same con- 
versation is given substantially by Chauvelot, Divinité du Christ, pp. 11-13, 
Paris 1863; in a small brochure attributed to M. le Pasteur Bersier, and 
published by the Religious Tract Society, Napoléon, Meyrueis, Paris, 1859 ; 
by M. Auguste Nicolas, in his Etudes Philosophiques sur le Christianisme, 
Bruxelles, 1849, tom. ii. pp. 352-356; and by the Chevalier de Beauterne in 
his Sentiment de Napoléon sur le Christianisme, édit. par M. Bathild Bouniol, 
Paris 1864, pp. 87-118. In the preface to General Bertrand’s Campagnes 
d’Egypte et de Syrie, there is an allusion to some reported conversations of 
Napoleon on the questions of the existence of Gop and of our Lord’s Divinity, 
which, the General says, never took place at all. But M. de Montholon, who 
with General Bertrand was present at the conversations which are recorded 
by the Chevalier de Beauterne, writes from Ham on May 30, 1841, to that 
author: ‘ J’ai lu avec un vif intérét votre brochure: Sentiment de Napoléon 
sur la Divinité de Jésus- Christ, et je ne pense pas qu’il soit possible de mieux 
exprimer les croyances religieuses de ’empereur.’ Sentiment de Napoléon, | 
Avertissem. p. viii. Writing, as it would seem, in ignorance of this testimony, 
M. Nicolas says: ‘ Cité plusieurs fois et dans des circonstances solennelles, 
ce jugement passe généralement pour historique.’ Etudes, ii. p. 352. yh (1). 

LECT. 


witness of our Lord’s work to Fis Divinity. 149 


Here surely is the common-sense of humanity. The victory 
of Christianity is the great standing miracle which Christ has 
wrought. Its significance is enhanced if the miracles of the 
New Testament are rejected*, and if the Apostles are held to 
have received no illumination from on highy. Let those in 
our day who believe seriously that the work of Christ may be 
accounted for on natural and human grounds, say who among 
themselves will endeavour to rival it. Who of our contem- 
poraries will dare to predict that eighteen hundred years hence 
his ideas, his maxims, his institutions, however noble or philan- 
thropic they may be, will still survive in their completeness and 
in their vigour? Who can dream that his own name and history 
will be the rallying-point of a world-wide interest and enthu- 
Slasm in some distant age? Who can suppose that beyond 
the political, the social, the intellectual revolutions which lie 
in the future of humanity, he will himself still survive in the 
memory of men, not as a trivial fact of archeology, but as a 
moral power, as the object of a devoted and passionate affection ? 
What man indeed that still retains, I will not say the faith of a 
Christian, but the modesty of a man of sense, must not feel that 
there is a literally infinite interval between himself and that 
Majestic One, Who, in the words of Jean Paul Richter, ‘being 
the Holiest among the mighty, and the Mightiest among the 
holy, has lifted with His pierced Hand empires off their hinges, 
has turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still 
governs the ages 2?’ : 

The work οἵ Jesus Christ is not merely a fact of history, it is 
a fact, blessed be God! of individual experience. If the world 
is one scene of His conquests, the soul of each true Christian is 
another. The soul is the microcosm within which, in all its 
strength, the kingdom of God is set up. Many of you know, 


x ¢Se il mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo 
Diss’ io, senza miracoli, quest’ uno 
I. tal, che gli altri non sono il centesmo; 
Che tu entrasti povero e digiuno 
In campo, a seminar la buona pianta, 
Che fu gid vite, ed ora ἃ fatta pruno.’ 
Dante, Paradiso, xxiv. 106-111. 
y* Apres la mort de Jésus-Christ, douze pauvres pécheurs et artisans en- 
treprirent d’instruire et de convertir le monde....le succés fut prodigieux 
.-.. Lous les chrétiens couraient au martyre, tous les peuples couraient au 
baptéme ; l'histoire de ces premiers temps était wn prodige continuel.’ Rous- 
seau, Réponse au Roi de Pologne, Paris, 1829, Discours, pp. 64, 65. 
5. Jean Paul: ‘Ueber den Gott in der Geschichte und im Leben,’ Simmtl. 
Werke, xxxiii. 6; Stirm. p. 194. 
III | 


150 Lhe redeemed soul owns a Divine Saviour. 


from a witness that you can trust, Christ’s power to restore to 
your inward life its original harmony. You are conscious that 
He is the fertilizing and elevating principle of your thought, the 
purifying principle of your affections, the invigorating principle 
of your wills. You need not to ask the question ‘whence hath 
this Man this wisdom and these mighty works?’ Man, you are 
well assured, cannot thus from age to age enlarge the realm of 
moral light, and make all things new; man cannot thus endow 
frail natures with determination, and rough natures with tender- 
ness, and sluggish natures with keen energy, and restless natures 
with true and ‘lasting peace. These every-day tokens of Christ’s 
presence in His kingdom, of themselves answer the question of 
the text. If He Who could predict that by dying in shame He 
would secure the fulfilment of an extraordinary plan, and assure 
to Himself a world-wide empire, can be none other than the 
Lord of human history ; so certainly the Friend, the Teacher, the 
Master Who has fathomed and controlled our deepest life of 
thought and passion, is welcomed by the Christian soul as some- 
thing more than a student exploring its mysteries, or than a 
philanthropic experimentalist alleviating its sorrows. He is 
hailed, He is loved, He is worshipped, as One Who possesses a 
knowledge and a strength which human study and human skill 
fail to compass; it is felt that He is so manifestly the true 
Saviour of the soul, because Βα is none other than the Being 
Who made it. 


[LECT. 


LECTURE ΤΥ. 


OUR LORD’S DIVINITY AS WITNESSED BY HIS 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 


The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone Thee not; but 
for blasphemy ; and because that Thou, being a Man, makest Thyself 
God.—StT. JOHN x, 33. 


It is common with some modern writers to represent the ques- 
tions at issue between the Faith and its opponents, in respect of 
the Person of our Lord, as being substantially a question between 
the ‘historical spirit’ and the spirit of dogmatism. The dog- 
matic temper is painted by them as a baseless but still powerful 
superstition, closely pressed by the critical enquiries and negative 
conclusions of our day, but culpably shutting its eyes against the 
advancing truth, the power of which nevertheless it cannot but 
instinctively feel, and clinging with the wrong-headed obstinacy 
of despair to the cherished but already condemned formule of 
its time-honoured and worn-out metaphysics. Opposed to it, 
we aré told, is the ‘historical spirit,’ young, vigorous, fearless, 
truthful, flushed with successes already achieved, assured of suc- 
cesses yet to come. The ‘ historical spirit’ is thus said to repre- 
sent the cause of an enlightened progress in conflict with a stupid 
and immoral conservatism. The ‘historical spirit’ is described 
as the love of sheer reality, as the longing for hard fact, deter- 
mined to make away with all ‘idols of the den,’ however ancient, 
venerated, and influential, in the sphere of theology. The ‘his- 
torical spirit’ accordingly undertakes to ‘disentangle the real 
Person of Jesus from the metaphysical envelope’ within which 
theology is said to have ‘encased’ Him. The Christ is to be 
rescued from that cloud-land of abstract and fanciful speculation, 
to which He is stated to have been banished by the patristic and 
scholastic divines ; He is to be restored to Christendom in mani- 
fest subjection to all the actual conditions and laws of human 
history. ‘Look,’ it is said, ‘at that figure of the Christ which 
he see traced in mosaics in the apsis of a Byzantine church, 
IV 


152 Lhe Christ of dogma and the Christ of history. 


That Countenance upon which you gaze, with its rigid, unalter- 
able outline, with its calm, strong mien of unassailable majesty ; 
that Form from which there has been stripped all the historic 
circumstance of life, all that belongs to the changes and chances 
of our mortal condition ; what is it but an artistic equivalent 
and symbol of the Catholic dogma? Elevated thus to a world 
of unfading glory, and throned in an imperturbable repose, the . 
Byzantine Christos Pantocrator must be viewed as the expression 
of an idea, rather than as the transcript of a fact. A certain 
interest may be allowed to attach to such a representation, from 
its illustrating a particular stage in the development of religious 
thought. But the “historical spirit” must create what it can 
consider a really “ historical” Christ, who will be to the Christ of 
St. Athanasius and St. John what a Rembrandt or a Rubens is 
to a Giotto or a Cimabue.’ If the illustration be objected to, at 
any rate, my brethren, the aim of the so-termed ‘historical’ 
school is sufficiently plain. It proposes to fashion a Christ 
who is to be esthetically graceful and majestic, but strictly 
natural and human. This Christ will be emancipated from the 
bandages which ‘supernaturalism has wrapped around the Pro- 
phet of Nazareth.’ He will be divorced from any idea of incar- 
nating essential Godhead ; but, as we are assured, He will still 
be something, aye more than the Christ of the Creed has ever 
been yet, to Christendom. He will be at once a living man, and 
the very ideal of humanity ; at once a being who obeys the in- 
vincible laws of nature, like ourselves, yet of moral proportions 
so mighty and so unrivalled that his appearance among men 
shall adequately account for the phenomenon of an existing and 
still expanding Church. 

Accordingly by this representation it is intended to place us 
in adilemma. ‘ You must choose,’ men seem to say, ‘ between 
history and dogma; you must choose between history which can 
be verified, and dogma which belongs to the sphere of inaccessible 
abstractions. You must make your choice; since the Catholic 
dogma of Christ’s Divinity is pronounced by the higher criticism 
to be irreconcileable with the historical reality of the Life of 
Jesus.’ And in answer to that challenge, let us proceed, my 
brethren, to choose history, and as a result of that choice, if it 
may be, to maintain that the Christ of history is either the God 
Whom we believers adore, or that He is far below the assumed © 
moral level of the mere man, whose character rationalism still, 
at least generally, professes to respect in the pages of its 
mutilated Gospel. 


[ nEcr. 


The Catholic dogma really historical. 153 


For let us observe that the Catholic doctrine has thus much 
in its favour :—it takes for granted the only existing history of 
Jesus Christ. It is not compelled to mutilate or to enfeeble it, 
or to do it critical violence. It is in league with this history; it is 
at home, as is no other doctrine, in the pages of the Evangelists. 

Consider, first of all, the general impression respecting our 
Lord’s Person, which arises upon a survey of the miracles 
ascribed to Him in all the extant accounts of His Life. To a 
thoughtful Humanitarian, who believes in the preternatural . 
elements of the Gospel history, our Lord’s miracles, taken as 
a whole, must needs present an embarrassing difficulty. The 
miraculous cures indeed, which, more particularly in the earlier 
days of Christ’s ministry, drew the eyes of men towards Him, as 
to the Healer οὗ sickness and of pain, have been ‘ explained,’ 
however unsatisfactorily, by the singular methods generally ac- 
cepted- among the older rationalists. A Teacher, it used to be 
argued, of such character as Jesus Christ, must have created a 
profound impression ; He must. have inspired an entire confi- 
dence ; and the cures which He seemed to work were the imme- 
diate results of the impression which He created ; they were the 
natural consequences of the confidence which He inspired. Now, 
apart from other and many obvious objections to this theory, let 
us observe that it is altogether inapplicable to the ‘miracles of 
power,’ as they are frequently termed, which are recorded by 
the three first Evangelists, no less than by St. John. ‘ Miracles 
of this class,’ says a freethinking writer, ‘are not cures which 
could have been effected by the influence of a striking sanctity 
acting upon a simple faith. They are prodigies; they are, as it 
seems, works which Omnipotence Alone could achieve. In the 
ease of these miracles it may be said that the laws of nature are 
simply suspended. Jesus does not here merely exhibit the 
power of moral and mental superiority over common men; He 
upsets and goes beyond the rules and bounds of the order of the 
universe. A word from His mouth stills a tempest. A few 
loaves and fishes are fashioned by His Almighty hand into an 
abundant feast, which satisfies thousands of hungry men. At 
His bidding life returns to inanimate corpses. By His curse a 
fig-tree which had no fruit on it is withered up?.’ The writer 


5. Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 21. Dr. Schenkel concludes: ‘ Sonst 
erscheint Jesus in den drei ersten Evangelien durchgiingig als ein wahrer, 
innerhalb der Grenzen menschlicher Beschrinkung sich bewegender Mensch ; 
durch Seine Wunderthiatigkeit werden diese Grenzen durchbrochen; All-~ 
machtswunder sind menschlich nicht mehr begreiflich,’ 


Iv ] 


154 Lhe Resurrection, and the truth of Christianity. 


proceeds to argue that such miracles must be expelled from any 
Life of Christ which ‘ criticism’ will condescend to accept. They 
belong, he contends, to that ‘torrent of legend, with which, 
according to the rationalistic creed, Jesus was surrounded after 
His Death by the unthinking enthusiasm of His disciples >. But 
then a question arises as to how much is to be included within 
this legendary ‘torrent.’ In particular, and above all else, is the 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave to be regarded as a 
part of its contributions to the Life of Christ? Here there is a 
division among the rationalizing critics. There are writers who 
reject our Lord’s miracles of power, His miraculous Conception, 
and even His Ascension into heaven, and who yet shrink from 
denying that very fundamental fact of all, the fact that on ‘ the 
third day He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures ©.’ 
A man must have made up his mind against Christianity more 
conclusively than men are generally willing to avow, if he is to 
speculate with M. Renan in the face of Christendom, as to the 
exact spot in which ‘the worms consumed the lifeless body’ of 
Jesus4, This explicit denial of the literal Resurrection of Jesus 
from the grave is not compensated for by some theory identical 
with, or analogous to, that of Hymeneus and Philetus ¢ respecting 
the general Resurrection, whereby the essential subject of Christ’s 
Resurrection is changed, and the idea of Christianity, or the soul 
of the converted Christian, as distinct from the Body of the Lord 
Jesus, is said to have been raised from the dead. For such a 
denial, let us mark it well, of the literal Resurrection of the 
Human Body of Jesus involves nothing less than an absolute and 
total rejection of Christianity. All orthodox Churches, all the 
great heresies, even Socinianism, have believed in the Resurrec- 
tion of Jesus. The literal Resurrection of Jesus was the cardinal 


b Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 21: ‘ Dass ein Lebensbild, wie dasjenige 
des Erlésers, bald nach dessen irdischem Hinscheiden von einem reichen Sa- 
genstrom umflossen wurde, liegt in der Natur der Sache.’ It may be asked— 
Why? If these legendary decorations are the inevitable consequences of a 
life of devotion to moral truth and to philanthropy, how are we to explain 
their absence in the cases of so many moralists and philanthropists ancient 
and modern ? 

¢ Οὗ Hase, Leben Jesu, p. 281, compared with p. 267. 

4 Les Apétres, p. 38: ‘ Pendant que la conviction inébranlable des Apdtres 
se formait, et que la foi du monde se préparait, en quel endroit les vers con- 
sumaient-ils le corps inanimé qui avait été, le samedi soir, déposé au sépulcre? 
On ignorera toujours ce détail; car, naturellement, les traditions chrétiennes 
ne peuvent rien nous apprendre la-dessus.’ 

e 2 Tim. ii. 18: Ὑμέναιος καὶ Φίλητος, οἵτινες περὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἠστόχη- 
σαν, λέγοντες τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἤδη γεγονέναι. I Tim. i. 20. 

[ LECT. 


The Resurrection, and other Christian miracles. 155 


fact upon which the earliest preachers of Christianity based their 
appeal to the Jewish people’. St. Paul, writing to a Gentile 
Church, expressly makes Christianity answer with its life for the 
literal truth of the Resurrection. ‘If Christ be not risen, then 
is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. . . Then they 
also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished *.’ Some 
modern writers would possibly have reproached St. Paul with 
offering a harsh alternative instead of an argument. But St. 
Paul would have replied, first, that our Lord’s honour and credit 
were entirely staked upon the issue, since He had foretold His 
Resurrection as the ‘sign’ which would justify His claims? ; 
and secondly, that the fact of the Resurrection was attested by 
evidence which must outweigh everything except an ἃ priore 
conviction of the impossibility of miracle, since it was attested by 
the word of more than two hundred and fifty living persons who 
had actually seen the Risen Jesusi, As to objections to miracle 
of an ἃ priori character, St. Paul would have argued, as most 
Theists, and even the French philosopher, have argued, that such 
objections could not be urged by any man who believed seriously 
in a living God at allk. But on the other hand, if the Resur- 
rection be admitted to be a fact, it is puerile to object to the other 
miracles of Jesus, or to any other Christian miracles, provided 


f Acts i. 22, ii. 24, 32, iii. 15, iv. 10, v. 30, X. 40, xili. 30, 33, 34, XVil. 31. 

& 1 Cor. xv. 14, 18. h St. Matt. xii. 39, 40. 

i 1 Cor. xv. 6: ἔπειτα ὥφθη ἐπάνω πεντακοσίοις ἀδελφοῖς ἐφάπαξ, ἐξ ὧν οἱ 
πλείους μένουσιν ἕως ἄρτι, τινὲς δὲ καὶ ἐκοιμήθησαν. It is quite arbitrary to 
say that ‘the Resurrection with Paul is by no means a human corporeal re- 
surrection as with the Evangelists,’ that ‘ his ὥφθη κἀμοί implies no more 
than a flash and a sound, which he interpreted as a presence of Christ.’ 
(Westm. Rev. Oct. 1867, p. 529.) On this shewing, the ὥφθη Σίμωνι in St. 
Luke xxiv. 34 might similarly be resolved into an illusion. The ἑωράκαμεν 
of St. John xx. 25 might be as unreal as the ἑώρακα of 1 Cor.ix.1. It is 
also a mere assumption to say that a ‘ palpable body’ could not be seen at 
once by 500 persons; and the suggestion that St. Paul’s own belief in ‘a 
continued celestial life of Christ,’ and in the moral resurrection of Christians 
was ‘afterwards materialized’ into ‘the history of a bodily resurrection of 
Christ, and the expectation of a bodily resurrection of mankind from the 
grave,’ is nothing less than to fasten upon the Apostle the pseudo-spiritual- 
istic error, against which in this chapter he so passionately contends, On 
this subject, see ‘ The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,’ by R. Macpherson, D.D., 
pp. 127, 346. 

k «Dieu peut-Il faire des miracles, c’est ἃ dire, peut-il déroger aux lois, 
41] a établies? Cette question sérieusement traitée serait impie, si elle 
n’était absurde. Ce serait faire trop @honneur a celui, qui la resoudrait nega- 
tivement, que de le punir; il suffirait de Penfermer. Mais aussi, quel homme 
a jamais nié, que Dieu pit faire des miracles?’ Rousseau, Lettres écrites de 
la Montagne, Lettre iii. 


Iv ] 


156 Christ’s miracles how related to His Divinity. 


they be sufficiently attested. To have admitted the stupendous 
truth that Jesus, after predicting that He would be put to a violent 
death, and then rise from the dead, was actually so killed, and 
then did actually so rise, must incapacitate any thoughtful man 
for objecting to the supernatural Conception or to the Ascension 
into heaven, or to the more striking wonders wrought by Jesus, 
on any such ground as that of intrinsic improbability. The 
Resurrection has, as compared with the other miraculous occur- 
rences narrated in the Gospels, all the force of an ἃ fortiort 
argument ; they follow, if we may use the term, naturally from 
it; they are fitly complemental incidents of a history in which 
the Resurrection has already made it plain, that we are dealing 
with One in Whose case our ordinary experience of the limits 
and conditions of human power is altogether at fault. 

But if the miracles of Jesus be admitted in the block, as by a 
‘rational’ believer in the Resurrection they must be admitted ; 
they do point, as I have said, to the Catholic belief, as distinct 
from any lower conceptions respecting the Person of Jesus Christ. 
They differ from the miracles of prophets and Apostles in that, 
instead of being answers to prayer, granted by a Higher Power, 
they manifestly flow forth from the majestic Life resident in the 
Worker!. And instead of presenting so many ‘difficulties’ 
which have to be surmounted or set aside, they are in entire 
harmony with that representation of our Saviour’s Personal 
glory which is embodied in the Creeds. St. John accordingly 
calls them Christ’s ‘works,’ meaning that they were just such 
acts as might be expected from Him, being such as He was. 
For indeed our Lord’s miracles are not merely evidences that 
He was the organ of a Divine revelation. They do not merely 
secure a deferential attention to His disclosures respecting the 
nature of God, the duty and destiny of man, His own Person, 
mission, and work. Certainly they have this properly evidential 
force; He Himself appealed to them as having it™, But it 
would be difficult altogether to account for their form, or for 
their varieties, or for the times at which they were wrought, or 
for the motives which were actually assigned for working them, 
on the supposition that their value was only evidential. They 
are like the kind deeds of the wealthy, or the good advice of the 
wise ; they are like that debt of charity which is due from the 
possessors of great endowments to suffering humanity. Christ 


1 Wilberforce on the Incarnation, Ρ. ΟἹ; note 11. Christian Remem- 
brancer, Oct. 1863, p. 274. m St. John x. 38. 
[ LEcrT. 


Their value not merely evidential. 157 


as Man owed this tribute of mercy which His Godhead had 
rendered it possible for Him to pay, to those whom (such. was 
His love) He was not ashamed to call His brethren. But 
besides this, Christ’s miracles are physical and symbolic repre- 
sentations of His redemptive action as the Divine Saviour of 
mankind. Their form is carefully adapted to express this 
action. -By healing the palsied, the blind, the lame, Christ 
clothed with a visible form His plenary power to cure spiritual 
diseases, such as the weakness, the darkness, the deadly torpor 
of the soul. By casting out devils from the possessed, He 
pointed to His victory over the principalities and powers of evil, 
whereby man would be freed from their thraldom and restored 
to moral liberty. By raising Lazarus from the corruption of 
the grave, He proclaimed Himself not’ merely a Revealer of the 
Resurrection, but the Resurrection and the Life itself. The 
drift and meaning of such a miracle as that in which our Lord’s 
‘Ephphatha’ brought hearing and speech to the deaf and dumb 
is at once apparent when we place it in the light of the Sacra- 
ment of baptism®. The feeding of the five thousand is remark- 
able as the one miracle which is narrated by all the Evangelists ; 
and even the least careful among readers of the Gospel cannot 
fail to be struck with the solemn actions which precede the 
wonder-work, as well’ as by the startling magnificence of the 
result. Yet the permanent significance of that extraordinary 
scene at Bethsaida Julias is never really understood, until our 
Lord’s great discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, which 
immediately follows it, is read as the spiritual exposition of the 
physical miracle, which is thus seen to be a commentary, pal- 
pable to sense, upon the vital efficacy of the Holy Communion®, 


n St. Mark viii. 34, 35. 
ο Compare St. John vi. 26-59; and observe the correspondence between 


the actions described in St. Matt. xiv. 19, and xxvi. 26. The deeper Lutheran 
commentators are noticeably distinguished from the Calvinistic ones in re- 
cognising the plain Sacramental reference of St. John vi. 53, sqq. See Stier, 
‘Reden Jesu,’ in loc. ; Olshausen, Comm. in loc.; Kahnis, H. Abendmahl, 
p- 104, sqq. For the ancient Church, see St. Chrys. Hom. in loc. ; Tertull. 
De Orat. 6; Clem. Alex. Pedagog. I. vi. p. 123; St. Cyprian, De Oratione 
Dominica, p. 192; St. Hilary, De Trin. viii. 14, cited in Wilb. H. Euch. p. 199. 
The Church of England authoritatively adopts the sacramental interpretation Ὁ 
of the passage by her use of it in the Exhortation at the time of the cele- 
bration of the Holy Communion. ‘The benefit is great, if with a true 
penitent heart and lively faith we receive that Holy Sacrament: for then we 
spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood; then we dwell in 
Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us. Cf, too 
the ‘ Prayer of Humble Access.’ 


Iv | 


158 Zhe mysteries of our Lord's Earthly Life 


In our Lord’s miracles then we have before us something 
more than a set of credentials ; since they manifest forth His 
Mediatorial Glory. They exhibit various aspects of that re- 
demptive power whereby He designed to save lost man from sin 
and death ; and they lead us to study, from many separate points 
of view, Christ’s majestic Personality, as the Source of the various 
wonders which radiate from it. And assuredly such a study can 
have but one result for those who honestly believe in the literal 
reality of the wonders described; it must force upon them a 
conviction of the Divinity of the workerP. 

But the miracles which especially point to the Catholie doc- 
trine as their justification, and which are simply incumbrances 
blocking up the way οἵ a Humanitarian theorist, are those of 
which our Lord’s Manhood is Itself the subject. According to 


P It may be urged that Socinians have been earnest believers in the 
Resurrection and other preternatural facts of the Life of Christ, while ex- 
plicitly denying His Godhead. This is true; but it is strictly true only of 
past times, or of those of our contemporaries who are more or less inacces- 
sible, happily for themselves, to the intellectual influences of modern 
scepticism. It would be difficult to find a modern Socinian of high edu- 
cation who believed in the literal truth of all the miraculous incidents 
recorded in the Gospels. This is not merely a result of modern objections 
to miracle; it is a result of the connexion, more clearly felt, even by sceptics, 
than of old, between the admission of miracles and the obligation to admit 
attendant dogma. In his Essay on Channing, M. Renan has given expression 
to this instinct of modern sceptical thought. ‘Il est certain,’ he observes, 
‘que si l’esprit moderne a raison de vouloir une religion, qui, sans exclure le 
surnaturel, en diminue la dose autant que possible, la religion de Channing 
est la plus parfaite et la plus épurée qui ait paru jusqu’ici. Mais est-ce 1a 
tout, en vérité, et quand le symbole sera réduit & croire & Dieu et au Christ, 
qu’y aura-t-on gagné? Le scepticisme se tiendra-t’il pour satisfait? La 
formule de l’univers en sera-t-elle plus complete et plus claire? La destinée 
de Phomme et de ’humanité moins impénétrable? Avec son symbole épuré, 
Channing évite-t-il mieux que les théologiens catholiques les objections de 
Vincrédulité? Hélas! non. II] admet la résurrection de Jésus-Christ, et 
n’admet pas sa Divinité; il admet le Bible, et n’admet pas l’enfer. 11 déploie 
toutes les susceptibilités d’un scholastique pour établir contre les Trinitaires, 
en quel sens le Christ est fils de Dieu, et en quel sens il ne l’est pas. Or, si 
Von accorde qu'il y a eu une Existence réelle et miraculeuse d'un bout a Vautre, 
pourquoi ne pas franchement Vappeler Divine? L’un ne demande pas un 


plus grand effort de croyance que l’autre. En vérité, dans cette voie, il n’y a | 


que le premier pas qui coute ; il ne faut pas marchander avec le surnaturel ; 
la foi va d’une seule piéce, et, le sacrifice accompli, il ne sied pas de réclamer 
en détail les droits dont on a fait une fois pour toutes l’entiére cession.’ 
Etudes d’Histoire Religieuse, pp. 377, 378. ‘Who would not rather, a 
thousand times over, have been Channing than be M. Renan? Yet is it not 
clear that, half a century later, Channing must have believed much less, or, 
as we may well trust, much more, than was believed by the minister of 
Federal-street Chapel, Boston? 

[ LECT. 


= 


amply that Hrs Person 1s Superhuman. 159 


the Gospel narrative, Jesus enters this world by one miracle, and 
He leaves it by another. His human manifestation centres in 
that miracle of miracles, His Resurrection from the grave after 
death. The Resurrection is the central fact up to which all 
leads, and from which all radiates. Such wonders as Christ’s 
Birth of a Virgin-mother, His Resurrection from the tomb, and 
His Ascension into heaven, are not merely the credentials of our 
redemption, they are distinct stages and processes of the re- 
demptive work itself... Taken in their entirety, they interpose a 
measureless interval between the Life of Jesus and the lives of 
the greatest of prophets or of Apostles, even of those to whom it 
was given to still the elements and to raise the dead. To expel 
these miracles from the Life of Jesus is to destroy the identity 
of the Christ of the Gospels ; it is to substitute a new Christ for 
the Christ of Christendom. Who would recognise the true 
Christ in the natural son of a human father, or in the crucified 
prophet whose body has rotted in an earthly grave? Yet on the 
other hand, who will not admit that He Who was conceived of 
the Holy Ghost and born of a Virgin-mother, Who, after being 
crucified, dead, and buried, rose again the third day from the 
dead, and then went up into heaven before the eyes of His 
Apostles, must needs be an altogether superhuman Being? The 
Catholic doctrine then is at home among the facts of the Gospel 
narrative by the mere fact of its proclaiming a superhuman 
Christ, while the modern Humanitarian theories are ill at ease 
among those facts. The four Evangelists, amid their dis- 
tinguishing peculiarities, concur in representing a Christ Whose 
Life is encased in a setting of miracles. The Catholic doctrine 
meets these representations more than half-way; they are in 
sympathy with, if they are not admitted to anticipate, its as- 
sertion. The Gospel miracles point at the very least to a Christ 
Who is altogether above the range of human experience ; and 
the Creeds recognise and confirm this indication by saying that 
He is Divine. Thus the Christ of dogma is the Christ of 
history: He is the Christ of the only extant history which 
describes the Founder of Christendom at all. He may not be 
the Christ of some modern commentators upon that history ; 
but these commentators do not affect to take the history as it 
has come down to us. As the Gospel narratives stand, they 
present a block of difficulties to Humanitarian theories; and 
these difficulties can only be removed by mutilations of the 
narratives so wholesale and radical as to destroy their sub- 
at. interest, besides rendering the retention of the fragments 
IV 


160 Can our Lord’s miracles be denied or tgnored ? 


which may be retained, a purely arbitrary procedure. The 
Gospel. narratives describe the Author of Christianity as the 
Worker and the subject of extraordinary miracles; and these 
miracles are such as to afford a natural lodgment for, nay, to 
demand as their correlative, the doctrine of the Creed. That 
doctrine must be admitted to be, if not the divinely authorized 
explanation, at least the best intellectual conception and réswmé 
of the evangelical history. A man need not be a believer in 
order to admit, that in asserting Christ’s Divinity we make a 
fair translation of the Gospel story into the language of abstract 
thought ; and that we have the best key to that story when we 
see in it the doctrine that Christ is God, unfolding itself in a. 
series of occurrences which on any other supposition seem to 
wear an air of nothing less than legendary extravagance. 

It may—it probably will—be objected to all this, that a large 
number of men and women at the present day are on the one 
hand strongly prepossessed against the credibility of all miracles 
whatever, while on the other they are sincere ‘admirers’ of the — 
moral character of Jesus Christ. They may not wish explicitly 
and in terms to reject the miraculous history recorded in the 
Gospels ; but still less do they desire to commit themselves to 
an unreserved acceptance of it. Whether from indifference to 
miraculous occurrences, or because their judgment is altogether 
in suspense, they would rather keep the preternatural element 
in our Lord’s Life out of sight, or shut their eyes to it. But 
they are open to the impressions which may be produced by the 
spectacle of high ethical beauty, if only the character of Christ 
can be disentangled from a series of wonders, which, as trans- 
cending all ordinary human experience, do not touch the motives 
that compel their assent to religious truth. Accordingly we are 
warned, that if it is not a piece of spiritual thoughtlessness, and 
even cruelty, it is at any rate a rhetorical mistake to insist upon 
a consideration so opposed to the intellectual temper of the 
time. 

This is what may be urged: but let it be observed, that the 
objector assumes a point which should rather have been proved. 
He assumes the possibility of putting forward an honest picture 
of the Life of Jesus, which shall uphold the beauty, and even the 
perfection of His moral character, while denying the historical 
reality of His miracles, or at any rate while ignoring them. 
Whereas, if the only records which we possess of the Life of 
Jesus are to be believed at all, they make it certain that Jesus 
Christ did claim to work, and was Himself the ener of 

LECT. 


Our Lord’s references to His Person: τότ 


startling miracles4. How can this fact be dealt with by a modern 
disbeliever in the miraculous? Was Christ then the ignorant 
victim and promoter of a crude superstition? Or was He, as 
M. Renan considers, passive and unresisting, while credited with 
working wonders which He knew to be merely thaumaturgic 
trickst? ΟἹ either supposition, is it possible to uphold Him as 
‘the moral ideal of humanity,’ or indeed as the worthy object of 
any true moral enthusiasm? We cannot decline this question ; 
it is forced upon us by the subject-matter. A neutral attitude 
towards the miraculous element in the Gospel history is impos- 
sible. The claim to work miracles is not the least prominent 
element of our Lord’s teaching ; nor are the miracles which are 
said to have been wrought by Him a fanciful or ornamental 
appendage to His action. The miraculous is inextricably inter- 
woven with the whole Life of Christ. The ethical beauty, nay 
the moral integrity of our Lord’s character is dependent, whether 
we will it or not, upon the reality of His miracles. It may be 
very desirable to defer as far as possible to the mental pre- 
possessions of our time; but it is not practicable to put asunder 
two things which God has joined together, namely, the beauty of 
Christ’s character and the bond jide reality of the miracles which 
He professed to work. 

But let us nevertheless follow the lead of this objection by 
turning to consider what is the real bearing of our Lord’s moral 
character upon the question of His Divinity. In order to do 
this, it is necessary to ask a previous question. What position 
did Jesus Christ, either tacitly or explicitly, claim to occupy in 
His intercourse with men? What allusions did He make to the 
subject of His Personality? You will feel, my brethren, that it 
is impossible to overrate the solemn importance of such a point 
as this. We are here touching the very heart of our great 
subject: we have penetrated to the inmost shrine of Christian 

truth, when we thus proceed to examine those words of the 


4 Ecce Homo, p. 43: ‘On the whole, miracles play so important a part in 
Christ’s scheme, that any theory which would represent them as due entirely 
to the imagination of His followers or of a later age, destroys the credibility 
of the documents, not partially, but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as 
mythical as Hercules.’ 

τ Cf. Vie de Jésus, p. 265 : ‘Il est done permis de croire qu’on lui imposa 
sa réputation de thaumaturge, qu'il n’y résista pas beaucoup, mais qu’il ne fit 
rien non plus pour y aider, et qu’en tout cas, il sentait la vanité de l’opinion 


a cet égard. Ce serait manquer ἃ la bonne méthode historique d’écouter trope” 


ici nos répugnances.’ See M. Renan’s account of the raising of Laz 
ibid. pp. 361, 362. 
Iv | M 


162 first stage of Christ’s teaching, mainly ethical, 


Gospels which exhibit the consciousness of the Founder of 
Christianity respecting His rank in the scale of being. With 
what awe, yet with what loving eagerness, must not a Christian 
enter on such an examination ! 


eA ee NN 


No reader of the Gospels can fail to see that, gpediing: -gene- 
rally, and without reference to any presumed order of the events _ 


and sayings in the Gospel history, there are two distinct stages 
or levels in the teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

I. Of these the first is mainly concerned with primary funda- 
mental moral truth. It is in substance a call to repentance, and 
the proclamation of a new life. It is summarized in the words, 
‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hands.’ A change 
of mind, both respecting self, and respecting God, was necessary 
before a man could lead the new life of the kingdom of heaven. 
In a previous lecture we have had occasion to consider the king- 
dom of heaven as the outline or plan of a world-wide institution 
which was to take its place in history. But viewed in its relation 
to the life of the soul, the kingdom of heaven is the home and the 
native atmosphere of a new and higher order of spiritual exist- 


ence. ‘This new life is not merely active thought, such as might — 


be stimulated by the cross-questioning of a Socrates; nor is it 
moral force, the play.of which was limited to the single soul that 
possessed it. It is moral and mental life, having God and men 
for its objects, and accordingly lived in an organized society, as 
the necessary counterpart of its energetic action. Of this stage 
of our Lord’s preaching, the Sermon on the Mount is the most 
representative document. The Sermon on the Mount preaches 
penitence by laying down the highest law of holiness. It con- 
trasts the externalized devotion, the conventional and worldly 


religion of the time, created and sanctioned by the leading cur- 


rents of public opinion, and described as the righteousness of the 
Scribes and Pharisees, with a new and severe ideal of morality, 
embodied in the new law of Christian perfection. It stimulates 
and regulates penitence, by proposing a new conception of 
blessedness ; by contrasting the spirit of the new law with the 
literalism of the old; by exhibiting the devotional duties, the 


ruling motives, the characteristic temper, and the special dangers ~ 


of the new life. Incidentally the Sermon on the Mount states 
certain doctrines, such as that of the Divine Providence, with 
great explicitnesst; but, throughout it, the moral element is 
predominant. This great discourse quickens and deepens a 


5. St. Matt. iv. 17. ὁ bid. vi. 25-33. . 
[ LECT. 


No confession of personal shortcomings. 163 


sense of sin by presenting the highest ideal of an inward holi- 
ness. In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord is laying broad 
and deep the foundations of His spiritual edifice. A pure and 
loving heart; an open and trustful conscience; a freedom of 
᾿ communion with the Father of spirits; a love of man as man, 
the measure of which is to be nothing less than a man’s love of 
himself ; above all a stern determination, at any cost, to be true, 
true with God, true with men, true with self ;—such are the 
pre-requisites for genuine discipleship ; such the spiritual and 
subjective bases of the new and Absolute Religion; such the- 
moral material of the first stage of our Lord’s public teaching. 

In this first stage of our Lord’s teaching let us moreover note 
‘two characteristics. 

(a) And first, that our Lord’s recorded language is absolutely 
wanting in a feature, which, on the supposition of His being 
merely human, would seem to have been practically indispensable. 
Our Lord does not place before us any relative or lower standard 
of morals. He proposes the highest standard ; He enforces the 
absolute morality. ‘Be ye therefore perfect,’ He says, ‘even as 
your Father Which is in heaven is perfect ἃ, Now in the case 
of a human teacher of high moral. and spiritual attainments, 
what should we expect to be a necessary accompaniment of this 
teaching? Surely we should expect some confession of personal 
unworthiness thus to teach. We should look for some trace of 
a feeling (so inevitable in this pulpit) that the message which 
must be spoken is the rebuke, if not the condemnation, of the 
man who must speak it. Conscious of many shortcomings, a 
human teacher must at some time relieve his natural sense of 
honesty, his fundamental instinct of justice, by noting the dis- 
crepancy between his weak, imperfect, perhaps miserable self, 
and his sublime and awful message. He must draw a line, if I 
may so speak, between his official and his personal self; and in 
his personal capacity he must honestly, anxiously, persistently 
associate himself with his hearers, as being before God, like each 
one of themselves, a learning, struggling, erring soul. But Jesus 
_ Christ makes no approach to such a distinction between Himself 
᾿ς and His message. He bids men be like God, and He gives not 
_ the faintest hint that any trace of unlikeness to God in Himself 
_ obliges Him to accompany the delivery of that precept with a 
protestation of His own personal unworthiness. Do you say 
that this is only a rhetorical style or mood derived by tradition 


υ St. Matt. v. 48. ’ 
Iv ] M 2 


= SS ee ΟΝ ΑΝ «πᾶσιν ee 4 ἀὶ τ. 


164 The sense of sin commonly quickened by sanctity, 


from the Hebrew prophets, and natural in any Semitic teacher 
who aspired to succeed them? I answer, that nothing is plainer 
in the Hebrew prophets than the clear distinction which is con- 
stantly maintained between the moral level of the teacher and 
the moral level of His message. The prophetic ambassador 
represents the Invisible King of Israel; but the holiness of the 
King is never measured, never compromised by the imperfec- 
tions of His representative. The prophetic writings abound in 
confessions of weakness, in confessions of shortcomings, in 
confessions of sin. The greatest of the prophets is permitted 
to see the glory of the Lord, and he forthwith exclaims in agony, 


‘Woe is me! for 1 am undone; because I am a man of unclean 


lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for 
mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts *.’ 

But the silence of Jesus respecting any such sense of personal 
unworthiness has been accounted for by the unrivalled closeness 
of His life-long communion with God. Is it then certain that 
the holiest souls are least alive to personal sin? Do they whose 
life of thought is little less than the breath of a perpetual prayer, 
and who dwell continuously in the presence-chamber of the King 
of kings, profess themselvessinsensible to that taint of sin, from 
which none are altogether free? Is this the lesson which we 
learn from the language of the best of the servants of God? My 
brethren, the very reverse is the case. Those who have lived 
nearest to God, and have known most about Him, and have been 
most visibly irradiated by the light of His countenance, have 
been foremost to acknowledge that the ‘burden’ of remaining 
imperfection in themselves was truly ‘intolerable.’ Their eager 
protestations have often seemed to the world to be either the 
exaggerations of fanaticism, or else the proof of a more than 
ordinary wickedness. For blemishes which might have passed 
‘unobserved in a spiritual twilight, are lighted up with torturing 
clearness by those searching, scorching rays of moral truth, that 
stream from the bright Sanetity of God upon the soul that 
beholds It. In that Presence the holiest of creatures must own 
with the Psalmist, ‘Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee, and 
our secret sins in the light of Thy countenanceY.’ Such self- 
accusing, broken-hearted confessions of sin have been the utter- 
ances of men the most conspicuous in Christendom for holiness 
of life; and no true saint of God ever supposed that by a con- 
stant spiritual sight of God the soul would lose its keen truthful 
sense of personal sinfulness. No man could presume that this 


x Isa. vi. 5. y Ps. xc, 8. : 


Ee δεν ν.»....»»»....- , 


Szeuzficance of Christ's sense of perfect sinlessness. 165 


sense of sinfulness, as distinct from the sense of unpardoned 
guilt, would be banished by close communion with God, unless 
his moral standard was low, and his creed imperfeet. Any such 
presumption is utterly inconsistent with a true sight of Him 
Whose severe and stainless beauty casts the shadow of failure 
upon all that is not Himself, and Who charges His very angels 
with moral folly. 

Yet Jesus Christ never once confesses sin; He never once 
asks for pardon. Is it not He, Who so sharply rebukes the 
self-righteousness of the Pharisee? Might He not seem to ignore 
all human piety that is not based upon a broken heart? Does 
He not deal with human nature at large as the true prodigal, who 
must penitently return to a Father’s love as the one condition of 
its peace and bliss. Yet He Himself never lets fall a hint, He 
Himself never breathes a prayer, which implies any, the slightest 
trace, of a personal remorse. From no casual admission do we 
gather that any, the most venial sin, has ever been His. Never 
for one moment does He associate Himself with any passing 
experience of that anxious dread of the penal future with which 
His own awful words must needs fill the sinner’s heart. If His 
Soul is troubled, at least His moral sorrows are not His own, 
they are a burden laid on Him by His love for others. Nay, 
He challenges His enemies to convince Him of sin. He declares 
positively that He does always the Will of the Father% Even 
when speaking of Himself as Man, He always refers to eternal 
life as His inalienable possession. It might, so perchance we 
think, be the illusion of a moral dullness, if only He did not 
penetrate the sin οὗ others with such relentless analysis. It 
might, we imagine, be a subtle pride, if we did not know Him 
to be so unrivalled in His great humility®. This consciousness 


2 St. John viii. 46, ibid. ver. 29, cf. ver. 26. 

ἃ Hollard, Caractére de Jésus-Christ, p. 150. Cf. also Ullmann, Siindlo- 
sigkeit, Th. I. Kap. 3. § 4. The frivolous objections to our Lord’s sin- 
lessness which are urged from St. Luke ii. 41-52, St. Matt. xxi. 12-17, 
and 17-22, and from His relation to Judas, are discussed in this work, 
Th. III. Kap. i. § 4. This interesting writer however, while asserting non 
peccasse of our Lord, falls short of Catholic truth in denying to Him the 
‘non posse peccare. The objections advanced by M. F. Pecant in his Le 
Christ e& la Conscience, 1859, are plainly a result of that writer’s Humani- 
tarianism. Our Lord’s answers to His Mother, His cursing the barren fig- 
tree, His sending the devils into the herd of swine, His driving the money- 
changers from the temple, and His last denunciations against the Pharisees, 
Reig no difficulty to those who see in Him the Lord, as well as the Son of 

ary, the Maker and Owner of the world of nature, the Searcher and Judge 
of human hearts. Cf. also note C. 


Iv | 


OH SAREE, CORE hes RAM SS ES Tg any ee ΤΣ ΤᾺ 
3 a eh nik) 


166 Authoritative character of Christ’s teaching. 


of an absolute sinlessness in such a Soul as that of Jesus Christ, 
points to a moral elevation unknown to our actual human expe- 
rience. It is, at the very least, suggestive of a relation to the 
Perfect Moral Being altogether unique in human history >. 

(8) The other characteristic of this stage of our Lord’s teach- 
ing is the attitude which He at once and, if I may so say, 
naturally assumes, not merely towards the teachers of His time, 
but towards the letter of that older, divinely-given Revelation 
which they preserved and interpreted. The people early remarked 
that Jesus ‘taught as One having authority, and not as the - 
Scribes°.’ The Scribes reasoned, they explained, they balanced 
argument against argument, they appealed to the critical or 
verifying faculty of their hearers. But here is a Teacher, Who 


> Cf. Mr. F. W. Newman, in his Phases of Faith, p. 143: ‘We have a 
very imperfect history of the Apostle James; and I do not know that I 
could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his 
absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set 
up this as a dogma of religion. Yet no one would blame me as morose, or 
indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing 
James to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing 
about him. And why? Singly and surely, because we know him to be a 
man: that suffices. To set up James or John or Daniel as my model and 
my Lord; to be swallowed up in him, and press him upon others as a uni- 
versal standard, would be despised as a self-degrading idolatry, and resented 
as an obtrusive favouritism. Now why does. not the same equally apply 
if the name Jesus be substituted for these? Why, in defect of all other 
knowledge than the bare fact of his manhood, are we not unhesitatingly to 
take for granted that he does not exhaust all perfection, and is at best only 
one amongst many brethren and equals?’ The answer is that we have to 
choose between believing in Christ’s moral perfection, and condemning Him 
of being guilty either of spiritual blindness or hypocrisy (see Ullmann ubi 
sup.); and that His teaching, His actions, and (Mr. Newman will allow us to 
add) His supernatural credentials, taken together, make believing Him to be 
sinless the easier alternative. But Mr. Newman’s remarks are of substantial 
value, as indirectly shewing, from a point of view much further removed from 
Catholic belief than Socinianism itself, how steadily a recognition of our 
' Lord’s moral perfection as Man tends to promote an acceptance of the truth 
that He is Gop. ‘If,’ says Mr. Newman, ‘I were already convinced that this 
person (he means our Lord) was a great Unique, separated from all other 
men by an impassable chasm in regard to his physical origin, I (for one) 
should be much readier to believe that he was wnique and unapproachable in 
other respects ; for all God’s works have an internal harmony. It could not 
be for nothing that this exceptional personage was sent into the world. 
That he was intended for head of the human race in one or more senses, 
would be a plausible opinion ; nor should I feel any incredulous repugnance 
against believing his morality to be, if not divinely perfect, yet separated from 
that of common men so far that he ‘might be a God to us, just as every parent 
is to a young child.’ Ibid. p. 142. ο St. Matt. vii. 29. 

| LECT. 


fis claim to revise the Sinaitic Revelation. 167 


sees truth intuitively, and announces it simply, without con- 
descending to recommend it by argument. He is a Teacher, 
moreover, not of truth obvious to all, but of truth which might 
have seemed to the men who first heard it to be what we should 
eall paradoxical. He condemns in the severest language the 
doctrine and the practice of the most influential religious au- 
thorities among His countrymen. He takes up instinctively a 
higher position than He assigns to any who had preceded Him 
in Israel. He passes in review, and accepts or abrogates not 
merely the traditional doctrines of the Jewish schools, but the 
Mosaic law itself. His style runs thus: ‘It was said ¢o them 
of old time, ... but I say unto you 4.’ 

Here too, it is necessary to protest against statements which 
imply that this authoritative teaching of Jesus was merely a 
continuation of the received prophetical style. It is true that 
the prophets gave prominence to the moral element in the 
teaching of the Pentateuch, that they expanded it, and that so 
far they anticipated one side of the ministry of Jesus Himself. 
But the prophets always appealed to a higher sanction; the 
prophetic argument addressed to the conscience of Israel was 
ever, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ How significant, how full of im- 
port as to His consciousness respecting Himself is our Lord’s 
substitute, ‘ Verily, verily, J say unto you.’ What prophet ever 
set himself above the great Legislator, above the Law written 
by the finger of God on Sinai? What prophet ever undertook to 
ratify the Pentateuch as a whole, to contrast his own higher 
morality with some of its precepts in detail, to imply even 
remotely that he was competent to revise that which every 
Israelite knew to be the handiwork of God? What prophet ever 
thus implicitly placed himself on a line of equality, not with 
Moses, not with Abraham, but with the Lord God Himself? So 
momentous a claim requires explanation if the claimant be 
only human. This impersonation of the source of moral law 
must rest upon some basis: what is the basis on which it rests 7 

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ does not deign to 
justify His lofty critical and revisionary attitude towards the 
ancient Law. - He neither explains nor exaggerates His power 
to review the older revelation, and to reveal new truth. He 
simply teaches ; He abrogates, He establishes, He sanctions, He 
unfolds, as the case may be, and in a tone which implies that 
His right to teach is not a matter for discussion. 

4 St. Matt. v.27. For the translation of τοῖς ἀρχαίοις, see Archbishop 
sg on Auth. Vers. of New Testament, p. 79. 

IV . 


τον 


“168 Why Christ provoked unfriendly scrutiny. 


It was inevitable that the question should be asked, anxiously, 
earnestly, fiercely, ‘Who is This Teacher? I say, it was inevit- 
able: for if you teach the lowest moral truth, in the humblest 
sphere, your right to do so will sooner or later be called in 
question. ‘To teach moral truth is to throw down a challenge 
to human nature, human nature being such as it actually is, 
that is to say, conscious of more or less disloyalty to the moral 
light which it already possesses, and indisposed to become re- 
sponsible for knowledge of a yet higher standard of moral truth, 
the existence of which it may already suspect. Accordingly the 
challenge which is thus made is generally met by a sharp counter- 
scrutiny into the claims, be they personal or official, of the 
teacher who dares to make it. This penalty of teaching can 
only be escaped either in certain rare and primitive conditions 
of society, or else when the teacher fails to do his duty. Mis- 
sionaries have described savage tribes whose sense of ignorance 
was too, sincere, and who were too grateful for knowledge, to ᾿ 
take umbrage at the practical bearings of a new doctrine. Poets 
have sung of ancestors 

‘Qui preeceptorem sancti voluere parentis 
Esse loco & 

Generally speaking, however, an immunity from criticism is to 
be secured by signal inefficiency, feebleness, or disloyalty to prin- 
ciple, on the part of the teacher. A teacher of morals may have 
persuaded his conscience that the ruling worldly-opinion of his 
time can safely be regarded as its court of final appeal. He may 
have forced his thought to shape itself with prudent docility into 
those precise conventionalities of expression which are understood 
to mean nothing, or which have lost their power. In such a 
case too it may happen that the total failure to achieve moral 
and spiritual victories will not necessarily entail on the teacher 
complete social or professional obscurity, while it will certainly 
protect him against any serious liability to hostile interference. 

Picture to yourselves, on the contrary, a teacher who is not 
merely under the official obligation to say something, but who is 
morally convinced that he has something to say. Imagine one 
who believes alike in the truth of his message and in the reality 
of his mission to deliver it. Let his message combine those 
moral contrasts which give permanency and true force to a 
doctrine, and which the Gospel alone has combined in their per- 
fection; Let this teacher be tender, yet searching ; let him win 


€ Juv. vil. 209. 
| [ uct. 


_ Second stage of our Lord s teaching. 169 


the hearts of men by his kindly humanity, while he probes, aye 
to the quick, their moral sores. Let him be uniformly calm, yet 
manifestly moved by the fire of repressed passion. Let him be 
stern yet not unloving, and resolute without sacrificing the 
elasticity of his sympathy, and genial without condescending to 
be the weakly accomplice of moral mischief. Let him pursue 
and expose the latent evil of the human heart through all the 
mazes of its unrivalled deceitfulness, without sullying his own 
purity, and without forfeiting his strong belief in the present 
capacity of every human being for goodness. Let him ‘know 
what is in man,’ and yet, with this knowledge clearly before 
him, let him not only not despair of humanity, but respect it, 
nay love it, even enthusiastically. Above all, let this teacher be 
perfectly independent. Let him be independent of the voice of 
the multitude ; independent of the enthusiasm and promptings 
of his disciples ; independent even when face to face with the 
‘bitter criticism and scorn of his antagonists; independent of all 
save God and his conscience. In a word, conceive a case in 
which moral authority and moral beauty combine to elicit a 
simultaneous tribute of reverence and of love. Clearly such 
a teacher must be a moral power; and as a consequence, his 
claim to teach must be scrutinized with a severity proportioned 
to the interest which he excites, and to the hostility which he 
cannot hope to escape provoking. And such a Teacher, or 
rather much more than this, was Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Nor is this all. The scrutiny which our Lord thus necessarily 
encountered from without was responded to, or rather it was 
anticipated, by self-discovery from within. ‘The soul,’ it has 
been said, ‘like the body, has its pores ;’ and in a sincere soul 
the pores of its life are always open. Instinctively, uncon- 
sciously, and whether a man will or not, the insignificance or 
the greatness of the inner life always reveals itself. In our 
Lord this self-revelation was not involuntary, or accidental, or 
forced ; it was in the highest degree deliberate. He knew the 
thoughts of those about Him, and He anticipated their ex- 
pression. He placed beyond a doubt, by the most explicit 
statements, that which might have been more than suspected, if 
He had only preached the Sermon on the Mount. 

II. It is characteristic then of what may be termed the 
second stage of our Lord’s public teaching, that He distinctly, 
repeatedly, energetically preaches Himself. He does not leave 
men to draw inferences about Himself from the power of His 
che teaching, or from the awe-inspiring nature of His miracles. 
IV 


170 ©frorms of our Lord’s Self-assertion. 


He does not content Himself with teaching primary moral truths 
concerning God and our duties towards God and towards one 
another. He does not bequeath to His Apostles the task of 
elaborating a theory respecting the Personal rank of their 
Master in the scale of being. On the contrary, He Himself 
persistently asserts the real character of His position relatively 
to God and man, and of His consequent claims upon the thought 
and heart of mankind. Whether He employs metaphor, or plain 
unmetaphorical assertion, His meaning is too clear to be mis- 
taken. He speaks of Himself as the Light of a darkened world‘, 
as the Way by which man may ascend to heaven8, as the Truth 
which can really satisfy the cravings of the soul, as the Life 
which must be imparted to all who would live in very deed, to 
all who would really live for everi, Life is resident in Him in 
virtue of an undefined and eternal communication of it from the 
Fatherk. He is the Bread of Lifel. He is the Living Bread 
That came down from heaven™; believers in Him will feed on 
Him and will have eternal life™. He points to a living water of 
the Spirit, which He can give, and which will quench the thirst 
of souls that drink it®, All who came before Him He cha- 
racterizes as having been, by comparison with Himself, the 
thieves and robbers of mankind?. He is Himself the One Good 
Shepherd of the souls of men41; He knows and He is known of 
His true sheep’. Not only is He the Shepherd, He is the very 
Door of the sheepfold ; to enter through Him is to be safe’. 
He is the Vine, the Life-tree of regenerate humanity*. All that 
is truly fruitful and lovely in the human family must branch 


f St. John viii. 12: Ἐγώ εἶμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου" ὃ ἀκολουθῶν ἐμοὶ od μὴ 
περιπατήσει ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ, ἀλλ᾽ ἕξει τὸ φῶς τῆς ζωῆς. 

& Ibid. xiv. 6 : Ἐγώ εἶμι 7 ὅδδός." 

h Ibid. : Ἐγώ εἰμι... ἡ ἀλήθειας, Mark xiii. 321 : 6 οὐρανὸς καὶ ἣ γῆ παρε- 
λεύσονται" οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου ov μὴ παρέλθωσι. [παρελεύσονται. Tisch.] 

i St. John xiv. 6: Ἐγώ εἰμι... . 7 ζωή. ( 

k Ibid. v. 26: ὥσπερ γὰρ 6 Πατὴρ ἔχει ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ, οὕτως ἔδωκε καὶ τῷ 
υἱῷ ζωὴν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ. 

1 [bid. vi. 35: Ἐγώ εἰμι ὃ ἄρτος τῆς ζωῆς. Ibid. ver. 48. 

m [bid. ver. 51 : Ἐγώ εἰμι 6 ἄρτος ὃ ζῶν 6 ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καταβάς. 

n Thid.ver. 47: ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, 6 πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ, ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον. 
Ibid. v. 40: οὐ θέλετε ἐλθεῖν πρός με, ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχητε. 

© [bid. iv. 14: ὃς δ᾽ ἂν πίῃ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος οὗ ἐγὼ δώσω αὐτῷ, οὐ μὴ διψήσει 
εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. 

P Ibid. x. 8: πάντες ὅσοι πρὸ ἐμοῦ ἦλθον, κλέπται εἰσὶ καὶ λῃσταί. 

ᾳ Ibid. ver. 11: Ἐγώ εἰμι 6 ποιμὴν ὃ καλός. Ibid. ver. 14. 

τ Thid. ver. 14: γινώσκω τὰ ἐμὰ, καὶ γινώσκομαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν. ᾿ 

8 Ibid. ver. 9: Ἐγώ εἶμι ἡ θύρα" δὲ ἐμοῦ ἐάν τις εἰσέλθῃ, σωθήσεται. 

t Ibid. xv. 1: Ἐγώ εἰμι ἣ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινή. 


[ LECT. . 


are 
ee fo 


Forms of our Lord’s Self-assertion. 171 


forth from Him®; all spiritual life must. wither and die, if it be 


severed from His*. He stands consciously between earth and 
heaven. He claims to be the One Means of a real approach to 
the Invisible God: no soul of man can come to the Father but © 
through Himy. He promises that all prayer offered in His 
Name shall be answered: ‘If ye ask anything in My Name ἢ 
will do it4%.’ He contrasts Himself with a group of His country- 
men as follows: ‘Ye are from beneath, I am from, above; ye 
are of this world, I am not of this world®.’ He anticipates His 
Death, and foretells its consequences: ‘I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto Myself>.’ He claims to be 
the Lord of the realm of death; He will Himself wake the 
sleeping dead ; all that are in the graves shall hear His voice€ ; 
nay, He will raise Himself from the deadd. He proclaims, ‘1 am 
the Resurrection and the Life®.’ He encourages men to trust in 
Him as they trust in God; to make Him an object of faith 
just as they believe in Gods; to honour Him as they honour 
the Father. To love Him is a necessary mark of the children 
of God: ‘If God were your Father, ye would have loved Mei,’ 
It is not possible, He rules, to love God, and yet to hate Him-. 


ᾳ St. John xv. 5: 6 μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ, κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ, οὗτος φέρει καρπὸν πολύν" 
ὅτι χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν. 

x Ibid. ver. 6: ἐὰν μή τις μείνῃ ἐν ἐμοὶ, ἐβλήθη ἔξω ὡς τὸ κλῆμα, καὶ 
ἐξηράνθη. 

Υ Ibid. xiv. 6: οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα, εἰ μὴ δ ἐμοῦ. 

5 ΤΌΪΑ. ver. 14: ἐάν τι αἰτήσητε ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου, ἐγὼ ποιήσω. 

8 Tbid. viii. 23: ὑμεῖς ἐκ τῶν κάτω ἐστὲ, ἐγὼ ἐκ τῶν ἄνω εἰμί" ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ 
κόσμου τούτου ἐστὲ, ἐγὼ οὐκ εἰμὶ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. 

b Ibid, xii. 32: κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν. 

¢ Ibid. v. 28, 29: ἔρχεται ὥρα, ἐν ἣ πάντες of ἐν τοῖς μνημείοις ἀκούσονται 
τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκπορεύσονται. Ibid. vi. 39, xi. 25. 

ἃ Thid. ii. 19: λύσατε τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον, καὶ ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἐγερῷ αὐτόν. 
1014. x. 18: ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτὴν [τὴν ψυχήν μου], καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω 
πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν. 

© Thid. xi. 25 : Ἐγώ εἶμε ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἣ ζωή. 

f [bid. xiv. §: μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία" πιστεύετε εἰς τὸν Θεὸν, καὶ 
εἰς ἐμὲ πιστεύετε. Ibid. xvi. 33: ταῦτα λελάληκα ὑμῖν, ἵνα ἐν ἐμοὶ εἰρήνην 
ἔχητε. ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ θλίψιν ἕξετε" [ἔχετε, Tisch.] ἀλλὰ θαρσεῖτε, ἐγὼ vevi- 
κηκα τὸν κόσμον. 

8 Ibid. vi. 29: τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ ἔργον τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἵνα πιστεύσητε εἰς ὃν ἀπέ- 
στειλεν ἐκεῖνος. Ibid. ver. 40: τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Πατρός μου" 
ἵνα πᾶς ὃ θεωρῶν τὸν Ὑἱὸν καὶ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν, ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Ibid. 
ver. 47: 6 πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ, ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Cf. Acts xxvi. 18: τοῦ λαβεῖν 
αὐτοὺς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν, καὶ κλῆρον ἐν τοῖς ἡγιασμένοις, πίστει τῇ εἰς ἐμέ. 

h St. John v. 23: ἵνα πάντες τιμῶσι τὸν Ὑἱὸν, καθὼς τιμῶσι τὸν Πατέρα. 

; Ibid. viii. 42: εἰ 6 Θεὸς πατὴρ ὑμῶν jv, ἠγαπᾶτε ἂν ἐμέ. Cf. Ibid. 
Xvl, 27. 

Iv | 


172 All the Gospels record Christ’s Self-assertion. 


self: ‘He that hateth Me, hateth My Father alsoj.’ The proof 
of a true love to Him lies in doing His bidding: ‘If ye love 
Me, keep I/y commandments«,’ | 

Of this second stage of our Lord’s teaching the most 
representative document is the Discourse in the supper-room. 
How great is the contrast between that discourse and the 
Sermon on the Mount! In the Sermon on the Mount, which 
deals with questions of human character and of moral obilgation, 
the reference to our Lord’s Person is comparatively indirect. 
It lies, not in explicit statements, but in the authority of His 
tone, in the attitude which He tacitly assumes towards the 
teachers of the Jewish people, and towards the ancient Law. 
In the last discourse it is His Person rather than His teaching 
which is especially prominent; His subject in that discourse is 
Himself. Certainly He preaches Himself in His relationship to 
His redeemed ; but still He preaches above all and in all, Him- 
self, All radiates from Himself, all converges towards Himself. 
The sorrows and perplexities of His disciples, the mission and 
work of the Paraclete, the mingling predictions of suffering and 
of glory, are all bound up with the Person of Jesus, as mani- | 
fested by Himself. In those matchless words all centres so con- 
sistently in Jesus, that it might seem that Jesus alone is before 
us; alone in the greatness of His supramundane glory ; alone 
in bearing His burden of an awful, fathomless sorrow. 

It will naturally occur to us that language such as that which 
has just been quoted is mainly characteristic of the fourth 
Gospel; and you will permit me, my brethren, to consider the 
objection which may underlie that observation somewhat at 
length in a future lecturel, For the present the author of 
‘Ecce Homo’ may remind those who, for whatever reasons, 
refuse to believe Christ to have used these words, that. ‘we 
cannot deny that He used words which have substantially the 
same meaning. We cannot deny that He called Himself King, 
Master, and Judge of men ; that He promised to give rest to the 
weary and the heavy-laden ; that He instructed His followers to 
hope-for life from feeding on His Body and His Blood™.’ 

Indeed so entirely is our Lord’s recorded teaching penetrated 
by His Self-assertion, that in order to represent Him as simply 


i St. John xv. 23: 6 ἐμὲ μισῶν, καὶ τὸν Πατέρα μου μισεῖ. 

k Ibid. xiv. 15: ἐὰν ἀγαπᾶτέ με, τὰς ἐντολὰς τὰς ἐμὰς τηρήσατε. 2 St. 
John 6: καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγάπη, ἵνα περιπατῶμεν κατὰ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ. 

1 See Lecture V. 

τὰ Ecce Homo, p. 177. Cf. also Mill, Myth. Interpret. p. 50. 


Chrest proclaims Himself the Fudge of all men. 173 


teaching moral truth, while keeping Himself strictly in the back- 
ground of His doctrine, it would be necessary to deny the trust- 
worthiness of all the accounts of His teaching which we possess. 
To recognise the difference which has been noticed between the 
two phases of His teaching merely amounts to saying that in the 
former His Self-proclamation is implied, while it is avowed in 
‘the latter. For even in that phase of Christ’s teaching which 
the three first Evangelists more particularly record, the public 
assumption of titles and functions such as those of King, 
Teacher, and Judge of the human race, implies those statements 
about Himself which are preserved in the fourth Gospel. 
Consider, for instance, what is really involved in a claim to 
judge the world. That Jesus Christ did put forward this claim 
must be conceded by those who admit that we have in our hands 
any true records of Him whatever. Men who reject that account 
of the four Gospels which is given us by the Catholic Church, 
may perhaps consent to listen to the opinion of Mr. Francis W. 
Newman. ‘I believe,’ says that writer, ‘that Jesus habitually 
spoke of Himself by the title Son of Man, [and] that in assum- 
ing that title He tacitly alluded to the seventh chapter of Daniel, 
and claimed for Himself the throne of judgment over all mankind. 
I know no reason to doubt that He actually delivered in sub- 
stance the discourse in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew.’ 
That our Lord advanced this tremendous claim to be the Judge 
of all mankind is equally the conviction of foreign critics, who 
are as widely removed as possible from any respéct whatever for 
_ the witness of the Church of Christ to Holy Writ®. But let us 
reflect steadily on what Christ is thus admitted to have said about 
Himself by the most advanced representatives of the destructive 
 eriticism. Christ says that He will return to earth as Judge of all 
mankind. He will sit upon a throne of glory, and will be attended 
by bands of obedient angels. Before Him will be gathered all the 
nations of the world, and He will judge them. In other words, 
He will proceed to discharge an office involving such spiritual 
insight, such discernment of the thoughts and intents of the 


n Phases of Faith, p. 149; cf. St. Matt. xxv. 31-46. 

ο Baur, Vorlesungen iiber N. T. Theologie, p. 109: ‘Dass Jesus Sich 
Selbst als den kiinftigen Richter betrachtete, und ankiindigte, lisst sich auch 
nach dem Evangelium Matthaus nicht in Zweifel ziehen. Fasst man die 
Lehre und Wirksamkeit Jesu auch nur nach dem sittlichen Gesichtspunkt 
auf, unter welchen sie der Bergrede und den Parabeln zufolge zu stellen ist, 
so gehdrt dazu wesentlich auch die Bestimmung, dass sie der absolute Maasstab 
zur Beurtheilung des sittlichen Werthes des Thuns und Verhaltens der Men- 
schen ist.’ 

Tv | 


174 force of the claim to be Universal Fudge. 


heart of each one of the millions at His feet, such awful, unshared 
supremacy in the moral world, that the imagination recoils in 
sheer agony from the task of seriously contemplating the assump- 
tion of these duties by any created intelligence. He will draw 
a sharp trenchant line of eternal separation through the dense 
throng of all the assembled races and generations of men. He 
will force every individual human being into ene of the two- 
distinct classes respectively destined for endless happiness and | 
endless woe. He will reserve no cases as involving complex moral 
problems beyond His own power of decision. He will sanction 
no intermediate class of awards, to meet the neutral morality of 
souls whom men might deem ‘too bad for heaven, yet too good 
for hell.’ If it should be urged that our Lord is teaching truth 
in the garb of parable, and that His words must not be taken 
too literally, it may be answered that, supposing this to be the 
case (a supposition by no means to be conceded) the main features, 
the purport and drift of the entire representation cannot be mis- 
taken. The Speaker claims to be Judge of all the world. When- 
ever, or however, you understand Him to exercise His function, 
Christ claims in that discourse to be nothing less than the Uni- 
versal Judge. You cannot honestly translate His language into 
any modern and prosaic equivalent, that does not carry with it 
this tremendous claim. Nor is it relevant to observe that Mes- 
siah had been pictured in prophecy as the Universal Judge, 
and that in assuming to judge the world Jesus Christ was only 
claiming an official consequence of the character which He had 
previously assumed. Surely this does not alter the nature of 
the claim. It does indeed shew what was involved in the 
original assertion that He was the Messiah; but it does not 
shew that the title of Universal Judge was a mere idealist 
decoration having no practical duties attached to it. On the con- 
trary, Jesus Christ asserts the practical value of the title very 
deliberately ; He insists on and expands its significance; He 
draws out what it implies into a vivid picture. It cannot be 
denied that He literally and deliberately put Himself forward as 
Judge of all the world ; and the moral significance of this Self- 
exaltation is not affected by the fact that He made it, as a part 
of His general Messianic claim. If He could not claim to be 
Messiah without making it, He ought not to have claimed to be 
Messiah unless He had a right to make it. It may be pleaded 
that He Himself said that the Father had given Him authority 
to execute judgment because He is the Son of ManP, But this, 
P St. John v. 27. 
[ LECT. 


ὌΝ 
3 


rl em 


Demands of Christ upon the human soul. 175 


as has already been shewn, means simply that He is the Uni- 
versal Judge because He is Messiah. True, the chosen title of 
Messiahship implies His real Humanity ; and His Human Nature 
invests Him with special fitness for this as for the rest of His 
mediatorial work. But then the title Son of Man, as implying 
His humanity, is in felt contrast to a higher Nature which it 
suggests. He is more than human; but He is to judge us, 
because He is also Man. On the whole it is impossible to reflect 
steadily on this claim of Jesus Christ without feeling that either 
such a claim ought never to have been made, or that it carries us 
forward irresistibly to a truth beyond and above itself. 

In dealing with separate souls our Lord’s tone and language 
are not less significant. We will not here dwell on the fact of 
His forgiving sins 4, and of transmitting to His Church the power 
of forgiving themr. But it is clear that He treats those who 
come to Him as literally belonging to Himself, in virtue of an 
existing right. He commands, He does not invite, discipleship. 
To Philip, to the sons of Zebedee, to the rich young man, He 
says simply, ‘ Follow Mes.’ In the same spirit His Apostles are 
bidden to resent resistance to their Master’s doctrine : ‘ When ye 
come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let 
your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your 
peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, 
nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, 
shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall 
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the 
day of judgment, than for that city t.’ yAnd as His message is to 
be received upon pain of eternal loss, so in receiving it, men are 
to give themselves up to Him simply and unreservedly. No 
rival claim, however strong, no natural affection, however legiti- 
mate and sacred, may interpose between Himself and the soul of 
His follower. ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me 
is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more 
than Me is not worthy of Me;’ ‘If any man come to Me, and 
hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 


4 St. Matt. ix. 6; St. Mark ii. 10. M.Salvador represents in our own 
day the Jewish feeling respecting this claim of our Lord. ‘ Voila pourquoi 
les docteurs se recrigrent de nouveau en entendant le Fils de Marie s’arroger 
ἃ lui-meme, et transmettre 4 ses délégués le droit du pardon : ils y voyaient 
pe autre manidre de prendre la place de Dieu.’ Jésus-Christ, tom. ii. p. 83. 

* St. Matt. xvi. το ; St. John xx. 23. 

5 St. Matt. iv. 19, viii. 22, ix. 9, xix.21; St. Mark ii. 14; St. Luke v. 27; 
St. a 43, X27. * St. Matt. x. 12-15. ἃ Ibid. 37. 

IV 


176 An intolerable claim, tf Christ be only Man. 


brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My 
disciple x.’ Accordingly He predicts the painful severance be- 
tween near relations which would accompany the advance of the 
Gospel : ‘Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ἢ 
1 tell you, Nay ; but rather division: for from henceforth there 
shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two 
against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and 
the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, 
and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against 
her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother 
in law.’ And the Gospel narrative itself furnishes us with a 


remarkable illustration of our Lord’s application of His claim. - 


‘He said unto another, Follow Me. But he said, Lord, suffer 
me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the 
dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of 
God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow Thee ; but let 
me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. 
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the 
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God 4,’ 

It is impossible to ignore this imperious claim on the part 
of Jesus to rule the whole soul of man. Other masters may 
demand a man’s active energies, or his time, or his purse, or 
his thought, or some large share in his affections; but here is 
a claim on the whole man, on his very inmost self, on the 
sanctities of his deepest life. Here is a claim which sets aside 
and ignores the dearest ties of family and kindred, if perchance 
they interfere with it. Does any who is merely man dare to 
advance such a claim as this? If so, is it possible that, believing 
him to be only a fellow-creature, we can listen to the claim with 
respect, with patience, without earnest indignation? Do not our 
souls belong only and wholly to Him Who made them? Can we 
not bury ourselves out of the sight and reach of every fellow-crea- 
ture, in the hidden recesses of the spirit which we carry within ? 
Can we not escape, if we will, from al] eyes save One, from all 
wills save One, from all voices save One, from all beings excepting 
Him Who gave us life? How then can we listen to the demand 
which is advanced by Jesus of Nazareth? Is it tolerable if He 
is only man? If He does indeed share with ourselves the great 
debt of creation at the hand of God; if He exists, like ourselves, 
from moment to moment merely upon sufferance ; or rather, if 
He is upheld in being in virtue of a continuous and gratuitous 
ministration of life, supplied to Him by the Author of all life ; 

x St. Luke xiv. 26. y Ibid. xii, 51-53. 2 Ibid. ix. 59-62. 

[ LECT. 


li: 
a ee - - , ..ν - 


Our Lord reveals His Godhead explicitly. 177 


is it endurable that He should thus assume to deal with us as 
His own creatures, as beings who have no rights before Him, 
and whom He may command at will? Doubtless He speaks of 
certain souls as given Him by His Father®; but then He claims 
the fealty, the submission of all. And even if souls are only 
‘given’ to Christ, how are we to account for this absolute 
gift of an immortal soul to a human Lord? What, in short, 
is the real moral justification of a claim, than which no larger 
- could be urged by the Creator? How can Christ bid men live 
for Himself as for the very End of their existence? How can He 
rightly draw towards Himself the whole thought and love, I do 
not say, of a world, but of one single human being, with this 
imperious urgency, if He be indeed only the Christ of the Hu- 
manitarian teachers, if He be anything else or less than the 
supreme Lord of life ? 

It is then not merely an easy transition, it is a positive 
moral relief, to pass from considering these statements and 
claims to the declarations in which Jesus Christ explains. them 
by explicitly asserting His Divinity. For although the solemn 
sentences in which He makes that supreme revelation are com- 
paratively few, it is clear that the truth is latent, in the entire 
moral and intellectual posture which we have been considering, 
unless we are prepared to fall back upon a fearful alternative 
which it will be my duty presently to notice. 

Every man who takes a public or stirring part in life may 
assume that he has to deal with three different classes of men. 
He must face ‘his personal friends, his declared opponents, and 
a large neutral body which is swayed by turns in the opposite 
directions of friendliness and opposition.’ Towards each of these 
classes he has varying obligations; and from their different 
points of view they form their estimate of his character and 
action. Now our Lord, entering as He did perfectly into the 
actual conditions of our human and social existence, exposed 
Himself to this triple scrutiny, and met it by a correspondingly 
threefold revelation. He revealed His Divinity to His disciples, 
to the Jewish people, and to His embittered opponents, the chief 
priests and Pharisees. 

Bearing in mind His acceptance of the confessions of Na- 
- thanael> and of St. Peter’, as well as His solemn words to 
Nicodemus 4, let us consider His language in the supper-room to 
St. Philip. It may have been Philip’s restlessness of mind, taking 


a a x.29. ὃ Ιρὶά. 1.49. 5 8έ, Matt. xvi.16. ἃ St.John iii. 18. 
IV N 


178 Chrest reveals His Godhead to the Apostles. 


pleasure, as men will, in the mere starting a religious difficulty 
for its own sake; it may have been an instinctive wish to find 
some excuse for escaping from those sterner obligations which, 
on the eve of the Passion, discipleship would threaten presently 
to impose. However this was, Philip preferred to our Lord the 
peremptory request, ‘ Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth 
us.’ Well might the answer have thrilled those who heard it. 
‘Have I been so long time with you, and yet thou hast not 
known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; 
and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou 
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Mee?’ Now 
what this indwelling really implied is seen in our Lord’s answer 
to a question of St. Jude. St. Jude had asked how it was that 
Christ would manifest Himself to His servants, and not to the 
world. Our Lord replies that the heavenly revelation is made 
to love ; but the form in which this answer is couched is of the 
highest significance. ‘If a man love Me, he will keep my words ; 
and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and 
make Our abode with him’’ ‘We will come unto him and 
‘make Owr abode! Reflect: Who is This Speaker That pro- 
mises to dwell in the soul of man? And with Whom does He 
associate Himself? It may be true of any eminent saint, that 
‘God speaks not to him, as to one outside Himself; that God is 
in him ; that he feels himself with God ; that he draws from his 
own heart what he tells us of the Father ; that he lives in the 
bosom of God by the intercommunion of every moment 8. But 
such an one could not forget that, favoured as he is by the Divine 
Presence illuminating his whole inner life, he still lives at an 
immeasurable distance beneath the Being Whose condescension 
has so enriched him. In virtue of his sanctity, he would surely 
shrink with horror from associating himself with God; from 
promising, along with God, to make a dwelling-place of the 
souls that love himself; from representing his presence with 
men as a blessing co-ordinate with the presence of the Father ; 
from attributing to himself oneness of will with the Will of 
God ; from implying that side by side with the Father of spirits, 


6 St. John xiv. 9, 10; Williams on Study of the Gospels, p. 403. 

f St. John xiv. 23. 

& Quoted in Dean Stanley’s Lectures on the Jewish Church, part ii. p. 161, 
from. Renan (Vie de Jésus, p. 75), who is speaking of our Lord. M. Renan, 
in using this language, is very careful to explain that he does not mean to 
assert that our Lord is God: ‘Jésus n’énonce pas un moment lidée sacri- 
lege (!) qu’il soit Dieu.’ Ibid. 

[ LECT. 


Christ reveals His Godhead to the Fewrsh people. 179 


he was himself equally a ruler and helper of the life of the souls 
of men. 

The most prominent statements however which our Lord 
made on the subject of His Divinity oceur in those conversations 
with the Jews which are specially recorded in the fourth Gospel. 
Our Lord discovers this great truth to the Jewish people by 
three distinct methods of statement. 

(a) In the first place, He distinctly places Himself on terms 
of equality with the Father, by a double claim. He claims a 
parity of working power, and He claims an equal right to the 
homage of mankind. Of these claims the former is implicitly 
contained in passages to which allusion has been already made. 
We have seen that it is contained in the assumption of a judicial 
authority equal to the task of deciding the final condition of 
every individual human being. Although this office is delegated 
to and exercised by our Lord as Man, yet so stupendous a task 
is obviously not less beyond the reach of any created intelligence 
than the providential government of the world. In like manner, 
this claim of an equality in working power with the Father is 
inseparable from our Lord’s statements that He could confer 
animal life, and that the future restoration of the whole human 
race to life would be effected by an act of His Willi, These 
statements were made by our Lord after healing the impotent 
man at the pool of Bethesda. They are in fact deductions from 
@ previous and more comprehensive one. Our Lord had healed 
the impotent man on the Sabbath day, and had bidden him take 
up his bed and walk. The Jews saw an infraction of the Sab- 
bath, both in the command given to the impotent man, and in 
the act of healing him. They sought to slay our Lord; but He 
justified Himself by saying, ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work,’ ‘Therefore,’ continues the Evangelist, ‘the Jews sought 


h St. John v. 21: 6 Ὑἱὸς obs θέλει ζωοποιεῖ, The quickening the dead is a 
special attribute of God (Deut. xxxii. 39; 1 Sam. ii. 6). If our Lord’s 
power of quickening whom He would had referred only to the moral life of 
man, the statement would not have been less significant. To raise a soul 
from spiritual death is at least as great a miracle, and as strictly proper to 
God Almighty, as to raise a dead body. But the ζωοποίησις here in question, 
if moral in ver. 25, is physical in ver. 28; our Lord is alluding to His re- 
cently-performed miracle as an illustration of His power. Ibid. vers. 8, 9. 

i St. John v. 28, 29: ἔρχεται Spa, ἐν ἣ πάντες οἱ ἐν τοῖς μνημείοις ἀκούσονται 
τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκπορεύσονται, οἱ τὰ ἀγαθὰ ποιήσαντες, εἰς ἀνάστασιν 
ζωῆς, οἱ δὲ τὰ φαῦλα πράξαντες, εἰς ἀνάστασιν κρίσεως. 

i St. John v. 17: 6 Πατήρ μου ews ἄρτι ἐργάζεται, κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι. ‘Wie 

der Vater seit Anbeginn nicht aufgehdrt habe, zum Heil der Welt zu 
Iv | N 2 


180 Our Lord’s claim to work on the Sabbath 


the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sab- 
bath, but said also that God was His Own Father, making Him- 
self equal with God.’ Now the Jews were not mistaken as to 
our Lord’s meaning. They knew that the Everlasting God 
‘neither rests nor is weary;’ they knew that if He could slumber 
but for a moment the universe would collapse into the nothing- 
ness out of which He has summoned it. They knew that He 
‘rested on the seventh day’ from the creation of new beings ; 
but that in maintaining the life of those which already exist, He 

‘worketh hitherto.’ They knew that none could associate him- 
self as did Jesus with this world-sustaining energy of God, who 
was not himself God. They saw clearly that no one could cite 
God’s example of an uninterrupted energy in nature and provi- 
dence as a reason for setting aside God’s positive law, without 
also and thereby claiming to be Divine. It did not occur to them 
that our Lord’s words need have implied no more than a resem- 
blance between His working and the working of the Father. If 
indeed our Lord had meant nothing more than this, He would 
not have met the objection urged by the Jews against His break- 
ing the Sabbath. It would have been no argument against the 
Jews to have said, that because God’s incessant activity is ever 
working in the universe, therefore a holy Jew might work on 
uninterruptedly, although he thereby violated the Sabbath day. 
With equal reason might it have been urged, that because God 


wirken, sondern immer fortwirke bis zur jetzigen Stunde, so mit Nothwen- 
digkeit und Recht, ungeachtet des Sabbathsgesetzes, auch Er, als der Sohn, 
Welcher als Solcher in dieser Seiner Wirksamkeit nicht dem Sabbathsgesetze 
unterthan sein kann, sondern Herr des Sabbaths ist.’ (St. Matt. xii. 8; 
St. Mark ii. 28.) Meyer in loc. 

k St. John v. 18: Πατέρα ἴδιον ἔλεγε τὸν Θεὸν, ἴσον ἑαυτὸν ποιῶν τῷ Θεῷ. ᾿ 
M. Salvador points out the abiding significance of our Lord’s language in the 
opinion of his co-religionists. ‘Si lon ne s’attaquait qu’aux traditions et 
interprétations abusives, c’était s’en prendre a la jurisprudence du jour, aux 
docteurs, aux hommes; c’était user simplement du droit commun en Israél, et 
provoquer une réforme. Mais si lon se mettait au dessus de l’institution en 
elle-méme, si, comme Jésus devant les docteurs, on se proclamait le Maitre 
absolu du sabbath, dans ce cas, entre circoncis, ο᾽ était attaquer a la loi, en 
renverser une des pierres angulaires ; ¢ ’ était imposer au grand Sacrificateur 
le devoir de faire entendre une voix accusatrice; enfin c’était s’élever au 
dessus du Dieu des Juifs, ow towt-au-moins se prétendre son Egal. Aussi une 
temoignage éclatant vient ἃ ’dppui de cette distinction, et ajoute une preuve 
ἃ la conformité générale des qtatres Evangiles. ‘Les Juifs,” dit judicieuse- 
ment lapétre et évangéliste J@an, ‘‘ne poursuivirent pas Jésus, par ce seul 
motif qwil violait les ordonnarices relatives au sabbath. On lui ‘intenta une 
action par cette autre raisow ; qu'il se faisait égal ἃ Dieu.’”’’ Salvador, Jésus- 
Christ, ii. pp. 80, 81. 


[ LECT. 


involves His true Divinity. i Bee 


sees good to take the lives of His creatures, in His mercy no less 
than in His justice, therefore a religious man might rightfully 
put to death His tempted or afflicted brother. The Sabbath was 
a positive precept, but it rested on a moral basis. It had been 
given by God Himself. Our Lord claims a right to break the 
Sabbath, because God’s ever active Providence is not suspended 
on that day. Our Lord thus places both His Will and His Power 
on the level of the Power and Will of the Father. He might 
have parried the Jewish attack by saying that the miracle of 
healing the impotent man was a work of God, and that He was 
Himself but the unresisting organ of a Higher Being. On the 
Socinian hypothesis He ought to have done so. But He repre- 
sents the miracle as His own work. He claims distinctly to be 
Lord of nature, and thus to be equal with the Father in point of 
operative energy. He makes the same assertion in saying that 
‘whatsoever things the Father doeth, those things the Son also 
doeth in like manner!’ To narrow down these words so as to 
make them only refer to Christ’s imitation of the moral nature 
of God, is to take a liberty with the text for which it affords no 
warrant; it is to make void the plain meaning of Scripture by a 
sceptical tradition. Our Lord simply and directly asserts that 
the works of the Father, without any restriction, are, both as to 
their nature and mode of production, the works of the Son. 
Certainly our Lord insists very carefully upon the truth that 
the power which He wielded was derived originally from the 
Father. It is often difficult to say whether He is speaking, as 
Man, of the honour of union with Deity and of the graces which 
flowed from Deity, conferred upon His Manhood ; or whether, 
as the Everlasting Son, He is describing those natural and 
eternal Gifts which are inherent in His Godhead, and which He 
receives from the Father, the Fountain or Source of Deity, not 
as a matter of grace or favour, but in virtue of His Eternal 
Generation. As God, ‘the Son can do nothing of Himself,’ and 
this, ‘not from lack of power, but because His Being is insepar- 
able from That of the Father™,’ It is true of Christ as God in 
one sense—it is true of Him as Man in another—that ‘as the 
Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to 
have life in Himself.’ But neither is an absolute harmony of 
the works of Christ with the Mind and Will of the Father, nor a 
derivation of the Divine Nature of Christ Itself from the Being 


1 St. John v. 19: ἃ γὰρ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ποιῇ, ταῦτα καὶ ὃ Tids ὁμοίως ποιεῖ. 
; m Euthym. 
Iv | 


182 Our Lord claims to be Ons with the Lather. 


of the Father by an unbegun and unending Generation, destruc- 
tive of the force of our Lord’s representation of His operative 
energy as being on a par with that of the Father. 

For, our Lord’s real sense is made plain by His subsequent 
statement that ‘the Father hath committed all judgment unto 
the Son; that all should honour the Son even as they honour 
the Father.’ This claim is indeed no more than He had 
already advanced in bidding His followers trust Him and love 
Him. The obligation of honouring the Son is defined to be just 
as stringent as the obligation of honouring the Father. What- 
ever form that honour may take, be it thought, or language, or 
outward act, or devotion of the affections, or submission of the 
will, or that union of thought and heart and will into one 
complex act of self-prostration before Infinite Greatness, which 
we of the present day usually mean by the term ‘adoration,’ 
such honour is due to the Son no less than to the Father. How 
fearful is such a claim if the Son be only human ; how natural, 
how moderate, how just, if He is in very deed Divine ! 

(8) Beyond this assertion of an equal operative Power with 
the Father, and of an equal right to the homage of mankind, is 
our Lord’s revelation of His absolute Oneness of Essence with 
the Father. The Jews gathered around Him at the Feast of 
Dedication in the Porch of Solomon, and pressed Him to tell 
them whether He was the Christ or not®. Our Lord referred 
them to the teaching which they had heard, and to the miracles 
which they had-witnessed in vainP ; but He proceeded to say” 
that there were docile and faithful souls whom He terms His 
‘sheep,’ and whom He ‘knew,’ while they too understood and 
followed Him4. He goes on to insist upon the blessedness of 
these His true followers. With Him they were secure; no 
power on earth or in heaven could ‘pluck them out of His 
Hand',’ A second reason for the blessedness of His sheep 


Ὁ St. John v. 22,23. Meyer in loc.: ‘In dem richtenden Sohne erscheint 
der beauftragte Stellvertreter des Vaters, und er ist in so fern (also immer 
relativ) zu ehren wie der Vater.’ But if the honour paid to the Son be merely 
relative, if He be merely honoured as an Ambassador or delegated Judge, then 
men do not honour Him as they honour the Father. No identity of language 
or of outward reverence can atone for a vital difference of principle in this 
tribute of honour. Moses had been ‘as a Gop unto Pharaoh: he had been 
Gop’s ambassador and judge among the children of Israel. Does he there- 
fore claim a ‘relative’ honour, equal in its outward symptoms, to that paid to 
Gop? And if not, why not? 

ο St. John x. 22, 23. P Ibid. ver. 25. 
a Ibid. ver. 27. Σ᾿ Ibid. ver. 28. 
[ LECT. 


Nature of this Unity. 183 


follows: ‘My Father which gave them Me is a Greater Power 
(μεῖζον) than all: and no man is able to pluck them out of My 
Father’s Hands,’ In these words our Lord repeats His previous 
assurance of the security of His sheep, but He gives a different 
reason for it. He had represented them as ‘in His own Hand ; 
He now represents them as in the Hand of the Almighty Father. 
How does He consolidate these two reasons which together 
assure His ‘sheep’ of their security? By distinctly asserting 
His own oneness with the Father: ‘I and My Father are One 
Thingt.’” Now what kind of unity is that which the context 
obliges us to see in this solemn statement? Is it such a unity 
as that which our Lord desired for His followers in His in- 
tercessory prayer ; a unity of spiritual communion, of reciprocal 
love, of common participation in an imparted, heaven-sent 
Naturet? Is it a unity of design and co-operation, such as 
that which, in varying degrees, is shared by all true workers for 
Godv? How would either of these lower unities sustain the 
full sense of the context, which represents the Hand of the Son 
as one with the Hand—that is, with the Love and Power—of 
the Father, securing to the souls of men an effectual preservation 
from eternal ruin? A unity like this: must be a dynamic unity, 
as distinct from any mere moral and intellectual union, such as 
might exist in a real sense between a creature and its God. 
Deny this dynamic unity, and you destroy the internal con- 
nexion of the passagex. Admit this dynamic unity, and you 
admit, by necessary implication, a unity of Essence. The Power 
of the Son, which shields the redeemed from the foes of their 


5 St. John x. 29. 

t Ibid. ver. 30: Ἐγὼ καὶ 6 Πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν. For a full explanation of this 
text see Bishop Beveridge’s noble sermon on the Unity of Christ with God 
the Father, Works, vol. ii. Serm. xxv. See also note D. 

Ὁ Asin St. John xvii. 11, 22, 23. v 1 Cor. iii. 8. 

* Meyer in Joh. x. 29: ‘ Der Vater in dem Sohne ist und wirkt, und daher 
dieser, als Organ und Trager [He is, of course, much more than this] der 
gottlichen Thitigkeit bei Ausfiihrung des Messianischen Werks, nicht ge- 
schieden von Gott []. 6. the Father] nicht ein zweiter ausser und neben Gott ist, 
sondern nach dem Wesen jener Gemeinschaft Hins mit Gott. Gottes Hand 
ist daher seine Hand in der Vollziehung des Werkes, bei welchem Er Gottes 
Macht, Liebe u. 5. w. handhabt und zur Ausfiihrung bringt. Die Einheit ist 
mithin die der dynamischen Gemeinschaft, wornach der Vater im Sohne ist, 
und doch grésser als der Sohn, [i.e. as man,] weil Er ihn geweiht und gesandt 
hat. Die Arianische Fassung von der ethischen Harmonie geniigt nicht, da die 
Argumentation, ohne die Einheit der Macht (welche Chrys. Euth. Zig. u. V. 
auch Liicke mit Recht urgiren) zu verstehen, nicht zutreffen wirde.’? This 
interpretation is remarkable for its scholarly fairness in a writer who sits so 
i. to the Catholic belief in our Lord’s Godhead as Meyer. 

IV 


184 Our Lord’s reference to Psalm \xxxii. 6. 


salvation, is the very Power of the Father ; and this identity of 
Power is itself the outflow and the manifestation of a Oneness 
of Nature. Not that at this height of contemplation the Person 
of the Son, so -distinctly manifested: just now in the work of 
guarding His redeemed, melts away into any mere aspect or 
relation of the Divine Being in His dealings with His creatures. 
As δύ. Augustine observes on this text, the ‘unum’ saves us 
from the Charybdis of Arianism ; the ‘sumus’ is our safeguard 
against the Scylla of Sabellius. The Son, within the incom- 
municable unity of God, is still Himself; He is not the Father, 
but the Son. Yet this personal subsistence is in the mystery of 
the Divine Life strictly compatible with Unity of Essence ;—the 
Father and the Son are one Thing. 

‘Intellexerunt Judei, quod non intelligunt Ariani.’ The Jews 
understood our Lord to assume Divine honours, and proceeded 
to execute the capital sentence decreed against blasphemy by 
the Mosaic lawy. His words gave them a fair ground for saying 
that ‘being Man, He made Himself God2.’ Now if our Lord 
had been in reality only Man, He might have been fairly ex- 
pected to say so. Whereas He proceeds, as was often His wont, 
to reason with His opponents upon their own real or assumed 
grounds, and so to bring them back to a point at which they 
were forced to draw for themselves the very inference which had 
just roused their indignation. With this view our Lord points 
out the application of the word Elohim, to the wicked judges 
under the Jewish theocracy, in the eighty-second Psalm 8, 
Surely, with this authoritative language before their eyes, His 
countrymen could not object to His calling Himself the Son of 
God. And yet He irresistibly implies that His title to Divinity 
is higher than, and indeed distinct in kind from, that of the 
Jewish magistrates. If the Jews could tolerate that ascription 
of a lower and relative divinity to the corrupt officials who, 
theocratically speaking, represented the Lord Jehovah ; surely, 
looking to the witness of His works, Divinity could not be 
denied to One Who so manifestly wielded Divine power as did 
Jesus», Our Lord’s argument is thus ἃ mmori ad majus ; and 
He arrives a second time at the assertion which had already 
given such offence to His countrymen, and which He now 
repeats in terms expressive of His sharing not merely a dy- 
namical but an essential unity with the Father: ‘The Father is 


y St. John x. 31. z Tbid. 33: Σὺ, ἄνθρωπος ὧν, ποιεῖς σεαυτὸν Θεόν. 
8 Ps. lxxxii. 6. b St. John x. 37, 38. 


[ LECT. 


The Fews understood our Lord’s meaning. 185 


in Me, and I in Hime,’ What the Father is to the Son, the 
Son is to the Father. The context again forbids us to compare 
this expression with the phrases which are often used to express 
the indwelling of God with holy souls, since no moral quality is 
here in question, but an identity of Power for the performance 
of superhuman works. Our Lord expresses this truth of His 
wielding the power of the Father, by asserting His identity of 
Nature with the Father, which involves His Omnipotence. And 
the Jews understood Him. He had not retracted what they 
accounted blasphemy, and they again endeavoured to take His 
lifed, ? 

It will probably be said that the Church’s interpretation of 
Christ’s language in the Porch of Solomon is but an instance of 
that disposition to materialize spiritual truth, which seems to be 
so unhappily natural to the mind of man. ‘ What grossness of 
apprehension,’ it will be urged, ‘is here! How can you thus 
confound language which merely asserts the sustained inter- 
communion of a holy soul with God, and those hard formal 
scholastic assertions of an identity of essence?’ But it is 
obvious to rejoin that in cases like that before us, language 
must be morally held to mean what it is understood to mean by 
those to whom it is addressed. After all, language is designed 
to convey thought ; and if a speaker perceives that his real mind 
has not been conveyed by one statement, he is bound to correct 
the deficiencies of that statement by another. Had our Lord 
been speaking to populations accustomed to Pantheistic modes 
of thinking, and insensible to the fundamental distinctness of 
the Uncreated from all forms of created life, His assertion of 
His oneness with the Father might perhaps have passed for 
nothing more than the rapture of a subjective ecstasy, in which 
the consciousness of the Speaker had been so raised above its 
ordinary level, that He could hyperbolically describe His sensa- 
tions as Divine. Had our Lord been an Indian, or an Alex- 
andrian, or a German mystic, some such interpretation might 
have been reasonably affixed to His language. Had Christ been 
a Christian instead of the Author of Christianity, we might, 
after carefully detaching His words from their context, have 
even supposed that He was describing the blessed experience of 
millions of believers ; it being certain that, since the Incarnation, 
the soul of man is capable of a real union with the All-holy 
God. Undoubtedly writers like St. Augustine, and many of 

ς δύ, John x. 38: ἐν ἐμοὶ 6 Πατὴρ, κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ. 

Ι ἃ Tbid. ver. 39: ἐζήτουν οὖν πάλιν αὐτὸν πιάσαι. 
IV 


186 Our Lord refers to F[rs Pre-existence. 


later date®, do speak of the union between God and the Chris- 
tian in terms which signally illustrate the loving condescension 
of God truly present in holy souls, of God’s gift of Himself to 
His redeemed creatures. But the belief of these writers re- 
specting the Nature of the Most High has placed the phrases 
of their mystical devotion beyond the reach of a possible 
misunderstanding. And our Lord was addressing earnest 
monotheists, keenly alive to the essential distinction between 


the Life of the Creator and the life’ of the creature, and re-' 


ligiously jealous of the Divine prerogatives. The Jews did not 
understand Christ’s claim to be One with the Father in any 
merely moral, spiritual, or mystical sense. Christ did not en- 
courage them so to understand it. The motive of their in- 
dignation was not disowned by Him. They believed Him to 
mean that He was Himself a Divine Person; and He never 
repudiated that construction of His language. 


(y) In order however to determine the real sense of our ° 


Saviour’s claim to be One with the Father, let us ask a simple 
question. Does it appear that He is recorded to have been con- 
scious of having existed previously to His Human Life upon this 
earth? Suppose that He is only a good man enjoying the highest 
degree of constant spiritual intercommunion with God, no refer- 
ences to a Pre-existent Life can be anticipated. There is nothing 
to warrant such a belief in the Mosaic Revelation, and to have 
professed it on the soil of Palestine would simply have been 
taken by the current opinion of the people as a proof of mental 
derangement. But believe that Christ is the Only-begotten Son 
of God, manifested in the sphere of sense and time, and clothed 
in our human nature; and some references to a consciousness 
extending backwards through the past into a boundless eternity 
are only what would naturally be looked for at His hands. 

Let us then listen to Him as He is proclaiming to His 
- countrymen in the temple, ‘If a man keep My saying, He shall 
never see death.” The Jews exclaim that by such an announce- 
ment He assumes to be greater than Abraham and the prophets. 
They indignantly ask, ‘Whom makest Thou Thyself?’ Here as 
elsewhere our Lord keeps both sides of His relation to the 
Eternal Father in full view: it is the Father that glorifies His 


6 e.g. Thomas ἃ Kempis. Of his teaching respecting the union between Gop 


and the devout soul, there is a good summary in Ullmann’s Reformers before 


the Reformation, vol. ii. pp. 139-149. Clarke’s transl. 
f St. John viii. 52: ἐάν τις τὸν λόγον τὸν ἐμὸν τηρήσῃ, θάνατον od μὴ θεω- 
ρήσῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. 
' [ LECT. 


Ἴ 
; 
Ἷ 
\ 
i 


~ eee eee ae ey ee 


‘Before Abraham was, I am? 187 


Manhood, and the Jews would glorify Him too if they were the 
Father’s true children. But it was not their Heavenly Father 
alone, with whom the Jews were at variance. The earthly 
ancestor of the Jewish race might be invoked to rebuke his 
recreant posterity. ‘Your Father Abraham rejoiced to see My 
day, and he saw it and was glad.’ Abraham had seen the day of 
Messiah by the light of prophecy, and accordingly this statement 
was a claim on the part of Jesus to be the true Messiah. Of 
itself such a claim would not have shocked the Jews; they 
would have discussed it on its merits. They had latterly looked 
for a political chief, victorious but human, in their expected 
Messiah ; they would have welcomed any prospect of realizing 
their expectations. But they detected a deeper and to them a 
less welcome meaning in the words of Christ. He had meant, 
they thought, by His ‘Day’ something more than the years of 
His Human Life. At any rate they would ask Him a question, 
which would at once justify their suspicions or enable Him to 
clear Himself. ‘Thou,’ they said to Him, ‘art not yet fifty years 
old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?’ Now if our Lord had only 
claimed to be a human Messiah, such as the Jews of later years 
had learned to look for, He must have earnestly disavowed any 
such inference from His words. He might have replied that if 
Abraham saw Him by the light of prophecy, this did not of itself 
imply that He was Abraham’s contemporary, and so that He 
had Himself literally seen Abraham. But His actual answer 
more than justified the most extreme suspicions of His examiners 
as to His real meaning. ‘ Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, Before Abraham was, J am.’ In these tremendous 

words the Speaker institutes a double contrast, in respect both 

of the duration and of the mode of His existence, between Him- 

self and the great ancestor of Israel. πρὶν ᾿Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι. 

Abraham, then, had come into existence at some given point of 
time. Abraham did not exist until his parents gave him birth. 

But, Ἐγώ εἰμι. Here is simple existence, with no note of 
beginning or ends. Our Lord says not, ‘Before Abraham 


& St. John viii. 58. Meyer in loc.: ‘Ehe Abraham ward, bin Ich, alter 
als Abraham’s Werden ist meine Existenz.’ Stier characterizes our Lord’s 
words as ‘a sudden [not to Himself] flash of revelation out of the depths of 
His own Eternal Consciousness.’ That Christ should finally have spoken 
thus, is not, Stier urges, to be wondered at, on the supposition of this Eternal 
Consciousness ever abiding with Him. Rather is it wonderful, that He 
should ordinarily, and as a rule, have restrained it so much. Here too, 
indeed, He restrains Himself. He does not go on to say, as afterwards in the 
Great Intercession—zpd τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι (St. John xvii. 5). 

Iv ] 


188 Christ speaks of having come down from heaven, 


was, 1 was,’ but ‘I am.’ He claims pre-existence indeed, but He 
does not merely claim pre-existence ; He unveils a conscious- 
ness of Eternal Being. He speaks as One on Whom time has no 
effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the I AM of 

ancient Israel ; He knows no past, as He knows no future ; He 
is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal ‘Now.’ 
This is the plain sense of His language, and perhaps the most 
instructive commentary upon its force is to be found in the 
violent expedients to which Humanitarian writers have been 
driven in order to evade it Β, 

Here again the Jews understood our Lord, and attempted to 
kill Him ; while He, instead of explaining Himself in any sense 
which would have disarmed their anger, simply withdrew from 
the temple i. 3 

With this statement we may compare Christ’s references to 
His pre-existence in His two great sacramental Discourses. 
Conversing with Nicodemus He describes Himself as the Son of 
Man Who had come down from heaven, and Who while yet 
speaking was in heaven. Preaching in the great synagogue of 
Capernaum, He calis Himself ‘the Bread of Life Which had 
come down from heaven.’ He repeats and expands this descrip- 
tion of Himself. His pre-existence is the warrant of His life- 


giving power!. The Jews objected that they knew His father 


and mother, and did not understand His advancing. any such 
claim as this to a Pre-existent Life. Our Lord replied by saying 
that no man could come to Him unless taught of God to do so, 
and then proceeded to re-assert His pre-existence in the same 
terms as before™. He pursued His former statement into its 
mysterious consequences. Since He was the heaven-descended 
Bread of Life, His Flesh was meat indeed and His Blood was 


drink indeed®, They only would have life in them who should 


h Cf. Meyer on St. John viii. 58: ‘Das ἐγώ εἶμι ist aber weder: Ich bin 
es (der Messias) zu deuten (Faustus Socinus, Paulus, ganz contextwidrig), 
noch in den Rathschluss Gottes, zu verlegen (Sam. Crell, Grotius, Paulus, 
B. Crusius), was schon durch das Praes. verboten wird. Nur noch 
geschichtlich bemerkenswerth ist die von Faustus Socinus auch in das 
Socinianische Bekenntniss (s. Catech. Racoy. ed. Oeder, p. 144, f.) tiberge- 
gangene Auslegung: ‘‘Ehe Abraham, Abraham, d. i. der Vater vieler Volker, 
wird, bin Ich es, niimlich der Messias, das Licht der Welt.” Damit ermahne 
Er die Juden, an Ihn zu glauben, so lange es noch Zeit sei, ehe die Gnade 
von ihnen genommen und auf die Heiden iibergetragen werde, wodurch dann 
Abraham der Vater vieler Volker werde.’ 

i St. John viii. 59. k Ibid. iii. 13. 1 Thid. vi. 33. 

m bid. vers. 44-51. Ὁ Ibid. ver. 55. 
[ LECT. 


and of ascending up to where He was before. 189 


eat this Flesh and drink this Blood ® Life eternal, Resurrection 
at the last dayP, and His own Presence even now within the 
soul 4, would follow upon a due partaking of that heavenly food. 
When the disciples murmured at this doctrine as a ‘ hard say- 
ing', our Lord met their objections by predicting His coming 
Ascension into heaven as an event which would justify His allu- 
sions to His pre-existence, no less than to the life-giving virtue 
of His Manhood. ‘What and if ye shall see the Son of Man 
ascend up where He was befores?’ Again, the reality of our 
Lord’s pre-existence lightens up such mysterious sayings as the 
following : ‘I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye 
cannot tell whence I come, and whither I got;’ ‘I am from 
above: . . . 1 am not of this world" ;’ ‘If ye believe not that I 
am He, ye shall die in your sins*;’ ‘I came forth from the 
Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the 
world, and go to the Fathery.’ Once more, how full of solemn 
significance is that reference to ‘the glory which I had with 
Thee before the world was2,’ in the great intercession which our 
Incarnate Saviour offered to the Eternal Father on the eve of 
His agony ! 

Certainly taken alone, our Lord’s allusions to His Pre-existence 
need not imply His true Divinity. There is indeed no ground 
for the theory of a Palestinian doctrine of metempsychosis ; and 
even Strauss shrinks from supposing that the fourth Evangelist 
_ makes Jesus the mouthpiece of Alexandrian theories of which a 
Jewish peasant would never have heard. Arianism however 
would argue, and with reason, that in some of the passages just 


ο St. John vi. 53. P Ibid. ver. 54. 

a Ibid. ver. 56. τ Tbid. ver. 60. 

s Tbid. ver. 62. Strauss thinks it ‘difficult but admissible’ to interpret 
St. John viii. 58, with the Socinian Crell, of a purely ideal existence in the 
predetermination of God. He considers it however ‘scarcely possible to view 
the prayer to the Father (St. John xvii. 5) to confirm the δόξα which Jesus 
had with Him before the world was, as an entreaty for the communication of 
a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity.’ He adds that the language of 
Jesus (St. John vi. 62) where He speaks of the Son of Man re-ascending 
where He was before, ἀναβαίνειν ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον, is ‘in its intrinsic mean- 
ing, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other passages, unequivo- 
cally significative of actual, not merely of ideal pre-existence.’ Leben Jesu, 
pt. ii. kap. 4. § 65. 

Here, as sometimes elsewhere, Strauss incidentally upholds the natural and 
Catholic interpretation of the text of the Gospels ; nor are we now concerned 
with the theory to which he eventually applies it. It may be further ob- 
served, that Strauss might have at léast interpreted St. John viii. 58 by the 
light of St. John vi. 62. t [bid. viii. 14. ἃ bid. ver. 23. 

1 Ibid. ver, 24. y Ibid. xvi. 28. 2 Tbid. xvii. 5. 
eV 


190 Our Lora’s testimony when before the Sanhedrin. 


referred to, though not in all, our Lord might conceivably have 
been speaking of a created, although pre-existent, life. Yet if 
we take these passages in connexion with our Lord’s assertion of 
His being One with the Father, each truth will be seen to sup- 
port and complete the other. On the one hand, Christ asserts 
His substantial oneness with Deity, on the other, His distinct 
pre-existent Personality. He might be an inferior and created 
Being, if He were not thus absolutely One with God. He might 
be only a saintly man, and, as such, described as an ‘aspect,’ a 
‘manifestation’ of the Divine Life, if His language about His 
pre-existence did not clearly imply that before His birth of 
Mary He was already a living and superhuman Person. 

If indeed, in His dealings with the multitude, our Lord had 
been really misunderstood, He had a last opportunity for ex- 
plaining Himself when He was arraigned before the Sanhedrin. 
Nothing is more certain than that, whatever was the dominant 
motive that prompted our Lord’s apprehension, the Sanhedrin 
condemned Him because He claimed Divinity. The members of 
the court stated this before Pilate. ‘We have a law, and by our 
law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God®,’ 
Their language would have been meaningless if they had under- 
stood by the ‘Son of God’ nothing more than the ethical or 
theocratic Sonship of their own ancient kings and saints. If the 
Jews held Christ to be a false Messiah, a false prophet, a blas- 
phemer, it was because He claimed literal Divinity. True, the 
Messiah was to have been Divine. But the Jews had secularized 
the Messianic promises; and the Sanhedrin held Jesus Christ 
to be worthy of death under the terms of the Mosaic law, as ex- 
pressed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy». After the witnesses 
had delivered their various and inconsistent testimonies, the 
high priest arose and said, ‘I adjure Thee by the living God, 
that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God. 
Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto 
you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the 
high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy°.’ 

@ St. John xix. 7. ‘ Devant ce procurateur,’ observes M. Salvador, ‘chacune 
des parties émit une parole capitale. Telle fut celle du conseil ou de ses 
délégués: ‘‘ Nous avons une loi; d’aprés cette loi il doit mourir,” non parce- 
qu'il s’est fait Fils de Dieu, selon l’expression familitre ἃ notre langue et ἃ nos 
prophétes ; mais parcequ’il se fait égal & Dieu, et Dieu méme.’ Salvador, 
Jésus-Christ, ii. p. 204. 

Ὁ Lev. xxiv. 16; Deut. xiii. 5 ; cf. Wilson, Illustration of the Method of 


Explaining the New Testament, p. 26. ¢ St. Matt. xxvi. ee 
LECT. 


He ἐς condemned for claiming to be Divine. 191 


The blasphemy did not consist, either in the assumption of the 
title Son of Man, or in the claim to be Messiah, or even, except- 
ing indirectly, in that which by the terms of Daniel’s prophecy 
was involved in Messiahship, namely, the commission to judge 
the world. It was the further claim4 to be the Son of God, 
not in any moral or theocratic, but in the natural sense, at which 
the high priest and his coadjutors professed to be so deeply 
shocked. The Jews felt, as our Lord intended, that the Son of 
_ Man in Daniel’s prophecy could not but be Divine; they knew 
what He meant by appropriating such words as applicable to 
Himself. Just as one body of Jews had endeavoured to destroy 
Jesus when He called God His Father in such sense as to claim 
Divinity ©; and another when He contrasted His Eternal Being 
with the fleeting life of Abraham in a distant past’; and another 
when He termed Himself Son of God, and associated Himself 
with His Father as being dynamically and so substantially Oneg; 
—just as they murmured at His pretension to ‘have come down 
from heaven 4,’ and detected blasphemy in His authoritative re- 
mission of sinsi;—so when, before His judges, He admitted that 
He claimed to be the Son of God, all further discussion was at 
anend. The high priest exclaimed ‘Ye have heard His blas- 
phemy ;’ and they all condemned Him to be guilty of death. 
And a very accomplished Jew of our own day, M. Salvador, has 
shewn that this question of our Lord’s Divinity was the real 
point at issue’ in that momentous trial. He maintains that 
a Jew had no logical alternative to belief in the Godhead of 
Jesus Christ except the imperative duty of putting Him to 
death Κ, 


ἃ Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, pp. 341, 615. e St. John v. 17, 18. 

f Thid. viii. 58, 59. 8 Ibid. x. 30, 31, 30. ® Tbid. vi. 42. 

i St. Matt. ix. 3; St. Luke v. 20, 21. 

k Salvador, Jésus-Christ, ii. pp. 132, 133, 195: ‘La question avait un cété 
politique ou national juif: c’était la résistance du Fils de Marie, dans Jéru- 
salem méme, aux ordres et avertissements du grand Conseil. Au point de 
vue religieux, selon la loi, Jésus se trouvait en cause pour s’étre déclaré égal 
ἃ Dieu et Dieu lui-méme.’ See also the Rev. W. Wilson’s Illustration of the 
Method of Explaining the New Testament, p. 77, sqq. Mr. Wilson shews 
that the Sanhedrin sincerely believed our Lord to be guilty of the crime of 
blasphemy, as inseparable, to a Jewish apprehension, from His claim to be 
Divine. This is argued (1) from the regularity of the proceedings of the 
. Sanhedrin, the length of the trial, and the earnestness and unanimity of the 
judges. The false witnesses were considered as such by the Sanhedrin: our 
Lord was condemned on the strength of His Own confession ; (2) from the 
language of the members of the Sanhedrin before Pilate: ‘By our law He 
ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God;’ (3) from the fact 


Iv | 


192 Christ's Self-assertion and His character. 


III. In order to do justice to the significance of our Lord’s 
language about Himself, let us for a moment reflect on our very 
fundamental conceptions of His character. There is indeed a 
certain seeming impropriety in using that word ‘character’ with 
respect. to Jesus Christ at all. For in modern. language 
‘character’ generally implies the predominance or the absence 
of some side or sides of that great whole, which we picture to 
ourselves in the background of each individual man as the true 
and complete ideal of human nature. This predominance or 
absence of particular traits or faculties, this precise combination 
of active or of passive qualities, determines the moral flavour of 
each individual life, and constitutes character. Character is 
that whereby the individual is marked off from the presumed 
standard or level of typical manhood. Yet the closest analysis 
of the actual Human Life of Jesus reveals a moral Portrait not 
only unlike any that men have witnessed before or since, but 
especially remarkable in that it presents an equally balanced and 
entirely harmonious representation of all the normal elements of 
our perfected moral naturel Still, we may dare to ask the 
question: What are the features in that perfectly harmonious 
moral Life, upon which the reverence and the love of Christians 
dwells most constantly, most thankfully, most enthusiastically ? 

1. If then on such a subject I may utter a truism without 
irreverence, I say first of all that Jesus Christ was sincere. He 
possessed that one indispensable qualification for any teacher, 
specially for a teacher of religion: He believed in what He said, 
without reserve ; and He said what He believed, without regard 
to consequences. Material error is very pardonable, if it be 
error which in good faith believes itself to be truth. But evident 
insincerity we cannot pardon ; we cannot regard with any other 


that the members of the Sanhedrin had no material object to gain by pro- 
nouncing Jesus guilty, without being persuaded of His criminality in claiming 
to be a Divine Person. Mr. Wilson fortifies these considerations by appeal- 
ing to our Lord’s silence, to St. Peter’s address to his countrymen in Acts iii. 
14-17, and to the general conduct of the Jewish people. 

1 Young, Christ of History, p. 217: ‘The difficulty which we chiefly feel 
in dealing with the character of Christ, as it unfolded itself before men, 
arises from its absolute perfection. On this very-account it is less fitted to 
arrest observation. A single excellence unusually developed, though in the 
neighbourhood of great faults, is instantly and universally attractive. Per- 
fect symmetry, on the other hand, does not startle, and is hidden from 
common and casual observers. But it is this which belongs emphatically to 
the Christ of the Gospels ; and we distinguish in Him at each moment that 
precise manifestation which is most natural and most right.’ 

LECT. 


Iv] 


Szucerity of Fesus Christ. 193 


sentiment than that of indignation the conscious propagation of 
what is known to be false, or even to be exaggerated. If however 
the sincerity of our Lord could be reasonably called in question, 
it might suffice, among the various facts which so irresistibly 
establish it, to point to His dealings with persons who followed 
and trusted Him. It is easy to denounce the errors of men who 
oppose us; but it is difficult to be always perfectly outspoken 
with those who love us, or who look up to us, or whose services 
may be of use to us, and who may be alienated by our out- 
spokenness. Now Jesus Christ does not merely drag forth to 
the light of day the hidden motives of His powerful adversaries, 
that He may exhibit them with so mercifully implacable an 
accuracy, in all their baseness and pretension. He exposes, with 
equal impartiality, the weakness, or the unreality, or the self- 
deception of others who already regard Him with affection or 
who desire to espouse His cause. A disciple addresses Him as 


“Good Master.’ The address was in itself sufficiently justifiable ; 


but our Lord observed that the speaker had used it in an unreal 
and conventional manner. In order to mark His displeasure He 
sharply asked, ‘Why callest thow Me Good? There is none good 
but One, that is, God™.’ A multitude which He has fed miracu- 
lously returns to seek Him on the following day ; but instead 
of silently accepting this tacit proof of His popular power, He 
observes, ‘ Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but 


because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled®.’ On another 


occasion, we are told, ‘there went great multitudes with Him.’ 
He turns, warns them that all human affections must be sacrificed 
to His service, and that none could be His disciple who does not 
take up the cross®, He solemnly bids men ‘count the cost’ before 
they ‘build the tower’ of discipleshipP. He is on the point of being 
deserted by all, and an Apostle protests with fervid exaggeration 
that he is ready to go with Him to prison or to death. But our 
Lord, instead of at once welcoming the affection which dictated 
this protestation, pauses to shew Simon Peter how little he really 
knew of the weakness of his own heart9, With the woman of 
Samaria, with Simon the Pharisee, with.the Jews in the temple, 
with the rich young man, it is ever the same; Christ cannot 
flatter, He cannot disguise, He cannot but set forth truth in its 


limpid purity". Such was His moral attitude throughout : sin” _. ΕΞ 


oA Ps ‘ 


m δέ, Mark x. 18. n §t. John vi. 26. ο St. Luke xiv 
P Ibid. ver. 28. ᾳ St. John xiii. 37, 38. 
* Cf. Newman, Parochial Sermons, vol. v. p. 37, serm. 3: ‘Unre 


wy ‘, \ 
: ; “» 
ἣν % va 
6 42 7: ᾿ a 
§ . ‘ 
as ee 


ΤΣ 
a 
Pas 


194 Unselfishness of Fesus Chrest. 


cerity was the mainspring of His whole thought and action ; and 
when He stood before His judges He could exclaim, in this as in 
a wider sense, ‘To this end was I born, and for this cause came 
I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truths,’ 
Surely this sincerity of our Holy Saviour is even at this hour 
a main secret of His attractive power. Men, we know, may 


flatter and deceive, till at length the soul grows sick and weary 


of a world, which Truth in her stern simplicity might some- 
times seem to have abandoned. But Jesus Christ, speaking to us 
from the Gospel pages, or speaking in the secret chambers of 
conscience, is a Monitor Whom we can trust to tell us the un- 
welcome but wholesome truth; and could we conceive of Him 
as false, He would no longer be Himself in our thought; He 
would not be changed; He would simply have disappeared t. 

2. A second moral truism: Jesus Christ was unselfish. His 
Life was a prolonged act of Self-sacrifice ; and sacrifice of self is 
the practical expression and measure of unselfishness. It might 
have seemed that where there was no sin to be curbed or worn 
away by sorrow and pain, there room might have been found for 
a lawful measure of self-satisfaction. But ‘even Christ pleased 
not Himself.” He ‘sought not His Own glory ;’ He ‘came not 
to do His Own will.’ His Body and His Soul, with all the 
faculties, the activities, the latent powers of each, were offered 
to the Divine Will. His friends, His relatives, His mother and 
His home, His pleasure, His reputation, His repose, were all 
abandoned for the glory of God and for the good of His 
brethren. His Self-sacrifice included the whole range of His 
human thought and affection and action; it lasted throughout 
His Life ; its highest expression was His Death upon the Cross. 
Those who believe Him to have been merely a man endowed 
with the power of working miracles, or even only with the 
power of wielding vast moral influence over masses of men, 
cannot but recognise the rare loveliness and sublimity of a Life 
in which great powers were consciously possessed, yet were 


5 St. John xviii. 37. 

t Félix, Jésus-Christ, p. 316; Channing, Works, ii. 55: ‘When I trace 
the unaffected majesty which runs through the life of Jesus, and see Him 
never falling below His sublime claims amidst poverty, and scorn, and in His 
last agony, I have a feeling of the reality of His character which I cannot ex- 
press. I feel that the Jewish carpenter could no more have conceived and 
sustained this character under motives of imposture, than an infant’s arm 
could repeat the deeds of Hercules, or his unawakened intellect comprehend 
and rival the matchless works of genius.’ 

Ὁ Rom. xv. 3; St. John v. 30, vi. 38; St. Matt. xxvi. 39. 

[ LECT. 


eer ig: ΟΝ ee 


Humility of $esus Christ. τοῦ 


never exercised for those objects which the selfish instinct of 
ordinary men would naturally pursue. It is this disinterested- 
ness; this devotion to the real interests of humankind ; this 
radical antagonism of His whole character to that deepseated 
selfishness, which in our better moments we men hate in our- 
selves and which we always hate in others ;—it is this complete 
renunciation of all that has no object beyond self, which has won 
to Jesus Christ the heart of mankind. In Jesus Christ we hail 
the One Friend Who loves perfectly ; Who expresses perfect 
love by the utter surrender of Self ; Who loves even unto death. 
In Jesus Christ we greet the Good Shepherd of humanity; He 
is the Good Shepherd under Whose care we can lack nothing, 
and Whose glory it is that He ‘giveth His Life for the sheep*.’ 
3. A third moral truism: Jesus Christ was humble. He might 
have appeared, even to human eyes, as ‘One naturally con- 
tented with obscurity ; wanting the restless desire for eminence 
and distinction which is so common in great men; hating to 
put forward personal claims; disliking competition and dis- 
putes who should be greatest; ... fond of what is simple and 
homely, of children, and poor peopley.’ It might have almost 
seemed as if His preternatural powers were a source of distress 
and embarrassment to Him; so eager was He to economize 
their exercise and to veil them from the eyes of men. He was 
particularly careful that His miracles should not add to His repu- 
tation”, Again and again He very earnestly enjoined silence 
on those who were the subjects of His miraculous cures®. He 
would not gratify persons whose motive in seeking His com- 
pany was a vain curiosity to see the proofs of His power». 
By this humility is Jesus Christ most emphatically distinguished 
from the philosophers of the ancient world. Whatever else 
they may have been, they were not humble.. But Jesus Christ 
loses His individuality if you separate Him in thought for one 
moment from His ‘ great humility.’ His humility is the key to 
His whole life; it is the measuring-line whereby His actions, His 
sufferings, His words, His very movements must be meted in 
order to be understood. ‘ Learn of Me,’ He says, ‘for I am meek 
and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls®,’ 
But what becomes of these integral features of His character 


x St. John x. 11. y Ecce Homo, pp. 178, 179. 

2 St. Luke viii. 51. 

8. St. Matt. ix. 30: ἐνεβριμήσατο ; xii. 16: ἐπετίμησεν αὐτοῖς. 

Ὁ St. Mark viii. 11, 12; St. Matt. xvi. 1, 4; St. Luke xi. 16; St. John 
Vi. 30. ὁ St. Matt. xi. 29. 
Iv | 02 


196 Ls Fesus Christ humble, of He ἐς not Gon? 


if, after considering the language which He actually used about 
Himself, we should go on to deny that He is God ? 

Is He, if He be not God, really humble? Is that reiterated 
Self-assertion, to the accents of which we have been listening 
this morning, consistent with any known form of creaturely 
humility? Can Jesus thus bid us believe in Him, love Him, 
obey Him, live by Him, live for Him; can He thus claim to 
be the universal Teacher and the universal Judge, the Way, the 
Truth, the Life of humanity,—if He be.indeed only man? 
What is humility but the honest recognition of truth respect- 
ing self? Could any mere man claim that place in thought, 
in society, in history, that authority over conscience, that rela- 
tionship to the Most High; could he claim such powers and 
duties, such a position, and such prerogatives as are claimed 
by Jesus Christ, and yet be justly deemed ‘meek and lowly 
of heart? Τῇ Christ is God as well as Man, His language falls 
into its place, and all is intelligible; but if you deny His 
Divinity, you must conclude that some of the most precious 
sayings in the Gospel are but the outbreak of a preposterous 
self-laudation ; they might well seem to breathe the very spirit 
of another Lucifer 4, 

If Jesus Christ be not God, is He really unselfish? He bids 
men make Himself the centre of their affections and their 
thoughts ; and when God does this He is but recalling man 
to that which is man’s proper duty, to the true direction and 
law of man’s being. But deny Christ’s Divinity, and what will 
you say of the disinterestedness of His perpetual self-assertion¢? 


ἃ Mr. F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 154: ‘When I find his high 
satisfaction at all personal recognition and bowing before his individuality, I 
almost doubt whether, if one wished to draw the character of a vain and 
vacillating pretender, it would be possible to draw anything nearer to the 
purpose than this.’ (p. 158), “1 can no longer give the same human reverence 
as before to one who has been seduced into vanity so egregious [as to claim 
to be the Son of Man].’ So our Lord’s parabolical sayings are said (p. 153) 
to ‘indicate vanity and incipient sacerdotalism ;’ (p.157), His tone, in dealing 
with the rich young man, is ‘ magisterial, decisive, and final,’ so as to keep up 
‘his own ostentation of omniscience ; His precept bidding men receive 
those whom He sent (Matt. x. 40) suggests the observation that inasmuch 
as the disciples ‘had no claims whatever, intrinsic or extrinsic, to reverence, 
it appears to me a very extravagant and fanatical sentiment thus to couple 
the favour or wrath of Gop with their reception or rejection’ (p. 157). 
Compare Félix, Jésus-Christ, pp. 301-322. 

e M. Renan accounts for our Lord’s self-assertion in the following manner. 
‘Il ne préchait pas ses opinions, il se préchait lui-méme., Souvent des 4mes 
trés-grandes et trés-désintéressées présentent, associé ἃ beaucoup oe 

LECT. 


Is Fesus Christ unselfish, if He ἐς not Gov? 197 


What matters it that He teaches the ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ 
if that enthusiasm was after all to centre in a merely human 
self, and to surround His human presence with a tribute of 
superhuman honour? What avails it that He proclaims the law 
of self-renouncement, if He is Himself thus guilty of its signal 
infraction? Nay, for ‘what. generous purpose can He still be held 
to have died upon the Cross? The Cross is indeed for Christians 
the symbol and the throne of a boundless Love ; but it is only 
such to those who believe in the Divinity of the Crucified. 
Deny the truth of Christ’s account of Himself; deny the over- 
whelming moral necessity for His perpetual Self-assertion ; and 
His Death may assume another aspect. For He plainly courted 
death by His last denunciations against the Pharisees, and by 
His presence at a critical moment in Jerusalem. That He was 
thus voluntarily slain and has redeemed us by His Blood is indeed 
the theme of the praises which Christians daily offer Him on 
earth and in paradise. But if He be not the Divine Victim 
freely offering Himself for men upon the altar of the Cross, may 
He not be what Christian lips cannot force themselves to utter? 
You urge that in any case He would be a man freely devoting 
himself for truth and goodness. But it is precisely here that 
His excessive self-assertion would impair our confidence in the 
purity of His motive. Is not self-sacrifice, even when pushed 
to the last extremity, a suspected and tainted thing, when it 
goes hand in hand with a consistent effort to give unwarranted 
prominence to self? Have not men ere now even risked death 
for the selfish, albeit unsubstantial, object of a posthumous 
renown!? If Jesus was merely man, and His death no more 


ce caractére de perpétuelle attention 4 elles-mémes, et d’extréme susceptibilité 
personnelle, qui en général est le propre des femmes. Leur persuasion que 
Dieu est en elles et s’occupe perpétuellement d’elles est si forte qu’elles ne | 
craignent nullement de s’imposer aux autres.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 76.) Ac- 
cordingly, we are told that ‘Jésus ne doit pas étre jugé sur la régle de nos 
petites convenances. L’admiration de ses disciples le débordait et l entrai- 
nait. 1] est évident que le titre de Rabbi, dont il s’était d’abord contenté, 
ne lui suffisait plus ; le titre méme de prophéte ou d’envoyé de Dieu ne ré- 
pondait plus ἃ sa pensée. La position qu’il s’attribuait était celle d’un étre 
surhumain, et il voulait qu’on le regard&t comme ayant avec Dieu un rapport 
plus élevé que celui des autres hommes.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 246.) 
᾿ς £ Newman, Phases, p. 158: ‘When he had resolved to claim Messiahship 
publicly, one of two results was inevitable, if that claim was ill-founded :-— 
viz., either he must have become an impostor in order to screen his weak- 
ness ; or he must have retracted his pretensions amid much humiliation and 
have retired into privacy to learn sober wisdom. From these alternatives there 
was escape only by death, and upon death Jesus purposely rushed.’ (p. 161.) 


Iv ] 


198 Ls Fesus Christ sincere, tf He ἐς not Gon ? 


than the fitting close, the supreme effort of a life consistently 
devoted to the assertion of self, has He not ‘succeeded beyond 
the dreams of the most delirious votary of fame? If the blood 
of a merely human Christ was the price which was deliberately 
paid for glory on Mount Calvary, then it is certain that the 
sufferer has had his reward. But at least he died, only as others 
have died, who have sought and found at the hands of their 
fellow-men, in death as in life, a tribute of sympathy, of ad- 
miration, of honour. And we owe to such a sufferer nothing 
beyond the compassionate silence wherewith charity would fain 
veil the violence of selfishness, robed in her garments, and 
seeking to share her glory and her power, while false to the very 
vital principle which makes her what she is&.’ 

Once more, if Jesus Christ is not God, can we even say that 
He is sincere? Let us suppose that it were granted, as it is by 
no means granted, that Jesus Christ nowhere asserts His literal 
Godheadi. Let us suppose that He was after all merely man, 
and had never meant to do more than describe, in the language 
of mysticism, the intertwining of His human Soul with the Spirit 


‘Does my friend deny that the death of Jesus was wilfully incurred? The 
“orthodox”? not merely admit but maintain it. Their creed justifies it by 
the doctrine that his death was a “ sacrifice’ so pleasing to Gop as to expiate 
the sins of the world, This honestly meets the objections to self-destruction ; 
for how better could life be used than by laying it down for such a prize.’ 

85. Félix, Jésus-Christ, p. 314; Young, The Christ of History, p. 229. 

h Newman, Phases, p. 154: ‘It sometimes seems to me the picture of a 
conscious and wilful impostor. His general character is too high for this ; 
and I therefore make deductions from the account. Still I do not see how 
the present narrative could have grown up, if he had been really simple and 
straightforward and not perverted by his essentially false position.” Mr. New- 
man is complaining that our Lord ‘does not honestly and plainly renounce 
pretension to miracle, as Mr. Martineau would,’ but his language obviously 
suggests a wider application. (p. 158.) ‘I feel assured, ἃ priori, that such 
presumption [as that of claiming to be the Son of Man of Dan. vii.] must 
have entangled him into evasions and insincerities, which naturally end in 
crookedness of conscience and real imposture, however noble a man’s com- 
mencement, and however unshrinking his sacrifice of goods and ease and 
life.’ 

i M. Renan indeed says, ‘Jésus n’énonce pas un moment l’idée sacrilége 
qu’il soit Dieu.’ (Viede Jésus, p. 75.) Yet, ‘on ne nie pas qu'il y eit dans 
les affirmations de Jésus le germe de la doctrine qui devait plus tard faire de 
lui une hypostase divine.’ (Ibid. p. 247.) M. Renan even explains our 
Lord’s language as to His Person on the ground that ‘l’idéalisme transcend- 
ant de Jésus ne lui permit jamais d’avoir une notion bien claire de sa propre 
personnalité. 77 est son Pére, son Pére est lui.” (p. 244.) In other words, 
our Lord did affirm His Divinity, but only because He was, unconsciously 
perhaps, a Pantheist ! 

[ LECT. 


a a 2... «ὦ. 


Lid Christ explain away Fis claims ὃ. 199 


of God, in a communion so deep and absorbing as to obliterate 
His sense of distinct human personality. Let this, I say, be 
supposed to have been His meaning, and let His sincerity be 
taken for granted. Who then shall anticipate the horror of His 
soul or the fire of His words, when He is once made aware of 
the terrible misapprehension to which his language has given 
rise in the minds around Him? ‘Thou being a man, makest 
Thyself God.’ The charge was literally true: being human, He 
did make Himself God. Christians believe that He only ‘made’ 
Himself that which He is. ‘But if He is not God, where does 
He make any adequate repudiation of a construction of His 
words so utterly derogatory to the great Creator, so necessarily 
abhorrent to a good man’s thought ? | 

Is it urged that on one occasion He ‘explained His claim to 
Divinity by a quotation which implied that He shared that claim 
with the chiefs of the theocracy?’ It has already been shewn | 
that by that quotation our Lord only deprecated immediate 
violence, and claimed a hearing for language which the Jews 
themselves regarded as not merely allowable, but sacred. The 
quotation justified His language only, and not His full meaning, 
which, upon gaining the ear of the people, He again proceeded 
to assert. Is it contended that in such sayings as that addressed 
to His disciples, ‘My Father is greater than ΓΕ,’ He abandoned 
any pretension to be a Person internal to the Essential Life of 
God? It may suffice to reply, that this saying can have no 
such force, if its application be restricted, as the Latin Fathers 
do restrict it, and with great apparent probability, to our Lord’s 
Manhood. But even if our Lord is here speaking, as the 
Greeks generally maintain, of His essential Deity, His Words 
still express very exactly a truth which is recognised and re- 
quired by the Catholic doctrine. The Subordination of , the 
Everlasting Son to the Everlasting Father is strictly compatible 
with the Son’s absolute Divinity ; it is abundantly implied in 
our Lord’s language; and it is an integral element of the 
ancient doctrine which steadily represents the Father as Alone 


k St. John xiv. 28: πορεύομαι πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα" ὅτι 6 ἸΤατήρ μου μείζων μου 
ἐστί. For Patristic arguments against the Arian abuse of this text, see Suicer, 
Thes. ii. p. 1368. The μειζονότης of the Father is referred by St. Athana- 
sius, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Hilary, to 
His being the Unbegotten One; by St.«Cyril, St. Augustine (in loc.; de 
Trin. i. 7 ; Enchiridion, x.), St. Ambrose (tom. iii. p. 795), St. Leo (Ep. ad 
Flav. xxviii. c. 4), to the Son’s humiliation as incarnate. See the very full 
— note of Meyer in loc. 

IV 


200 Fesus Christ not sincere, tf Fle ἐς not Gon. 


Unoriginate, the Fount of Deity in the Eternal Life of the 
Ever-blessed Trinity]. : 


But surely an admission on the part of one in whom men saw ~ 


nothing more than a fellow-creature, that the Everlasting God 
was ‘greater’ than himself, would fail to satisfy a thoughtful 
listener that no claim to Divinity was advanced by the speaker. 
Such an admission presupposes some assertion to which it stands 
in the relation of a necessary qualification. If any good man of 
our acquaintance should announce that God was ‘ greater’ than 
himself, should we not hold him to be guilty of something worse 
than a stupid truism™? Would he not seem to imply that he 
was not really a creature of God’s hand? Would not his words 
go to suggest that the notion of his absolute equality with God 
was not to be dismissed as altogether out of the question? 
Should we not peremptorily remind him that the life of man is 
related to the Life of God, not as the less to the greater, but as 
the created to the Uncreated, and that it is an impertinent 
irreverence to admit superiority of rank, where the real truth can 
only be expressed by an assertion of radical difference of natures? 
And assuredly a sane and honest man, who had been accused of 


associating himself with the Supreme Being, could not content © 


himself with admitting that God was greater than himself. 
Knowing himself to be only human, would he not insist again and 
again, with passionate fervour, upon the incommunicable glory 
of the great Creator? Would not a purely human Christ have 
anticipated the burning words of the indignant Apostles at the 
gate of Lystra? Far more welcome to human virtue most surely 
it would: have been, to be accused of blasphemy for meaning what 


1 Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. iv. i. 1: ‘Decretum illud Synodi Nicenz, quo 
statpitur Filium Dei esse Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ, Deum de Deo, suo calculo com- 
probarunt doctores Catholici, tum qui ante cum qui post Synodum illam 
scripsére. Nam illi omnes uno ore docuerunt naturam * perfectionesque 
divinas, Patri Filioque competere non collateraliter aut coordinaté, sed sub- 
ordinaté ; hoc est, Filium eandem quidem naturam divinam cum Patre com- 
munem habere, sed & Patre communicatam ; ita scilicet ut Pater solus naturam 
illam divinam a se habeat, sive ἃ nullo alio, Filius autem a Patre; proinde 
Pater, Divinitatis que in Filio est, fons, origo ac principium sit.’ See Bull’s 
remarks on the fundamental character of the error of calling the Son αὐτόθεος, 
as though He were not begotten of the Father, Ibid. iv.i.7. _Also Petavius, 
De Deo Deique proprietatibus, ii. 3, 6. Compare Hooker’s Works, vol. i., 
Keble’s Preface, p. Ixxxi. When St. Athanasius calls our Lord αὐτόθεος, 
αὐτοσοφία, &c., αὐτὸς has the sense of ‘full reality’ as distinct from that of 
‘Self-origination ;’ the idea is excluded that He had only a measure of Wisdom 
or Divinity. See Petavius de Trin. vii. 11. 

τὰ Coleridge, Table-talk, p. 25. 

[ LECT. 


ά a ee ae 


Insincertity of the Christ of 77. Renan. 201 


was never meant, than to be literally supposed to mean it. For 
indeed there are occasions when silence is impossible to a sincere 
souls, Especially is this the case when acquiescence in falsehood 
is likely to gain personal reputation, when connivance at a mis- 
apprehension may aggrandize self, ever so slightly, at the cost of 
others. How would the sincerity of a human teacher deserve 
the name, if, passively, without repudiation, without protest, he 
should allow language expressive whether of his moral elevation 
or of his mystical devotion to be popularly construed into a 
public claim to share the Rank and Name of the great God in 
heaven ? 

It is here that the so-termed historical Christ of M. Renan, 
who, as we are informed, is still the moral chief of humanity 9, 
would appear even to our natural English sense of honesty to be 
involved in serious moral difficulties. M. Renan indeed assures 
us, somewhat eagerly, that there are many standards of sincerity P; 


2 See Dean Alford on St. John xix. 9. 

© Renan, Vie de Jésus, p. 457: ‘Cette sublime personne, qui chaque 
jour préside encore au destin du monde, il est permis de l’appeler divine, non 
en ce sens que Jésus ait absorbé tout le divin, ou lui ait été adéquat (pour 
employer l’expression de .la scolastique) mais en ce sens que Jésus est 
Pindividu gui a fait faire ἃ son espéce le plus grand pas vers le divin. 
L’humanité dans son ensemble offre un assemblage d’étres bas, égoistes, 
supérieurs ἃ l’animal en cela seul que leur égoisme est plus réfléchi. Mais, 
au milieu de cette uniforme vulgarité, des colonnes s’élévent vers le ciel et 
attestent une plus noble destinée. Jésus est la‘plus haute de ces colonnes 
qui montrent ἃ ’homme d’oit il vient, et ot il doit tendre. En lui s’est con- 
densé tout ce qu’il y a de bon et d’élevé dans notre nature.” On the other 
hand, M. Renan is not quite consistent with himself, as he is of opinion that 
certain Pagans and unbelievers were in some respects superior to our Lord. 
‘L’honnéte et suave Marc-Aurele, ?humble et doux Spinoza, n’ayant pas 
cru aw miracle, ont été exempts de quelques erreurs que Jésus partagea.’ 
‘(Ibid. p. 451.) Moreover, this superiority to our Lord seems to be shared 
by that advanced school of sceptical enquirers to which M. Renan himself 
belongs. ‘ Par notre extréme délicatesse dans l’emploi des moyens de con- 
viction, par notre sincérité absolue et notre amour désintéressé de Pidée pure, 
nous avons fondé, nous tous qui avons voué notre vie ἃ la science, wn nouvel 
idéal de moralité.’ (Ibid.) Indeed, as regards our Lord, M. Renan suggests 
that ‘il est probable que beaucoup de ses fautes ont été dissimulées.’ (Ibid. 
Ρ- 458.) 

Ρ Ibid. p. 252: ‘ Pour nous, races profondément sérieuses, la conviction 
signifie la sincérité avec soi-méme. Mais la sincérité avec soi-méme n’a pas 
beaucoup de sens chez les peuples orientaux, peu habitués aux délicatesses 
. de lesprit critique. Bonne foi et imposture sont des mots qui, dans notre 
conscience rigide, s’opposent comme deux termes inconciliables. En Orient, 
il ya de lun ἃ lautre mille fuites et mille détours. Les auteurs de livres 
apocryphes (de ‘ Daniel,” d’‘‘ Hénoch,” par exemple), hommes si exaltés, 
commettaient pour leur cause, et bien certainement sans ombre de scrupule, 


Iv] 


202 Moral defects of the Humanitarian Christ. 


that is to say, that it is possible, under certain circumstances, to 
acquiesce knowingly in what is false, while yet being, in some 
transcendental sense, sincere. Thus, just as the Christ of 
M. Renan can permit the raising of Lazarus to look like a 
miracle, while he must know that the whole episode has been 
a matter of previous arrangement4, so he can apparently use 
language which is generally understood to claim Divinity, with- 
out being bound to explain that he is altogether human’. The 
‘ideal of humanity’ contents himself, it appears, with a lower 
measure, so to call it, of sincerity ; and while we are scarcely 
embarrassed by the enquiry whether such sincerity is sincere or 


un acte que nous appellerions un faux. La vérité matérielle a trés-peu de 
prix pour oriental; il voit tout & travers ses idées, ses intéréts, ses passions. 
L’histoire est impossible, si l’on n’admet hautement qu'il y a pour la sincérité 
plusiewrs mesures.’ 

a M. Renan introduces his account of the resurrection of Lazarus by ob- 
serving that ‘les amis de Jésus désiraient un grand miracle qui frappat vive- 
ment l’incrédulité hiérosolymite. La résurrection d’un homme connu ἃ 
Jérusalem dut paraitre ce qu'il y avait de plus convaincant. I] faut se rap- 
peler ici que la condition essentielle de la vraie critique est de comprendre la 
diversité des temps, et de se dépouiller des répugnances instinctives qui sont 
le fruit d’une éducation purement raisonnable. Il faut se rappeler aussi que 
dans cette ville impure et pesante de Jérusalem Jésus n’était plus lui-méme. 
Sa conscience, par la faute des hommes, et non par la sienne, avait perdu 
quelque chose de sa limpidité primordiale.’ (Vie de Jésus, p. 359.) Under 
these circumstances, ‘il se passa ἃ Béthanie quelque chose qui fut regardé 
comme une résurrection.’ (p. 360.) ‘ Peut-étre Lazare, pale encore de sa 
maladie, se fit-il entourer de bandelettes comme un mort, et enfermer dans 
son tombeau de famille. . . Jésus désira voir encore une fois celui qu’il avait 
aimé, et, la pierre ayant été écartée, Lazare sortit avec ses bandelettes et la 
téte entourée d’un suaire. Cette apparition dut naturellement étre regardée 
par tout le monde comme une résurrection. La foi ne connait d’autre loi que 
Vintérét de ce qu’elle croit le vrai. . . . . Quant ἃ Jésus, il n’était pas plus 
maitre que saint Bernard, que saint Frangois d’Assise de modérer ’avidité de 
la foule et de ses propres disciples pour le merveilleux. La mort, d’ailleurs, 
allait dans quelques jours lui rendre sa liberté divine, et l’arracher aux 
fatales nécessités d'un rile qui chaque jowr devenatt plus exigeant, plus difficile 
ἃ soutenir.’ (p. 363.) 

τ Sometimes M.Renan endeavours to avoid this conclusion by representing 
our Lord’s self-proclamation as being in truth the result of a vain self-sur- 
render to the fanatical adulation of His followers, the reiteration of which in 
the end deceived Himself. (Vie de Jésus, p. 139): ‘ Naturellement, plus on 
croyait en lui, plus il croyait en lui-méme.’ Accordingly (p. 240) ‘sa légende 
(i.e. the account given of Him in the Gospels and in the Apostles’ Creed, 
and specially the doctrine of His Divinity) était le fruit d’une grande conspi- — 
ration toute spontanée et s’élaborait autour de lui de son vivant.’ Thus 
(p. 238) the Christ of M. Renan first allows himself to be falsely called the 
Son of David, and then ‘ il finit, ce semble, par y prendre plaisir.’ Cf. p. 297, 
note. 

[ LECT. 


‘ Christus, st non Deus, non bonus. 203 


not, we cannot hesitate to observe that it is certainly consistent 
neither with real humility nor with real unselfishness 5, 

Thus our Lord’s human glory fades before our eyes when we 
attempt to conceive of it apart from the truth of His Divinity. 
He is only perfect as Man, because He is truly God. If He is 
not God, He is not a humble or an unselfish man, Nay, He is 
not even sincere ; unless indeed we have recourse to a supposi- 
tion upon which the most desperate of His modern opponents 
have not yet ventured, and say with His jealous kinsmen in the 
early days of His ministry, that He was beside Himselft. Cer- 
tainly it would seem that there must have been strange method 
in a madness which could command the adoration of the eivilized 
world ; nor would any such supposition be seriously entertained 
by those who know under what conditions the very lowest forms 
of moral influence are at all possible. The choice really lies 
between the hypothesis of conscious and culpable insincerity, 
and the belief that Jesus speaks literal truth and must be taken 
at His word ἃ, 

You complain that this is one of those alternatives which 
orthodoxy is wont to substitute for less violent arguments, and 
from the exigencies of which you piously recoil? But under 
certain circumstances such alternatives are legitimate guides to 
truth, nay, they are the only guides available. Certainly we 
cannot create such alternatives by any process of dialectical 
manufacture, if they do not already exist. If they are not mat- 
ters of fact, they can easily be convicted of inaccuracy. We who 
stand in this pulpit are not makers or masters of the eternal 
harmonies ; we can but exhibit them as best we may. ‘Truth, 
even in her severer moods, must ever be welcome to sincerity ; 
and she does us a service by reminding us that it is not always 
possible to embrace within the range of our religious negations 


8 Félix, Jésus-Christ, p. 321. 

* Channing, Works, ii. 56: ‘The charge of an extravagant, self-deluding 
enthusiasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where can we find traces of 
it in His history? Do we detect them in the calm authority of His pre- 
cepts ; in the mild, practical, beneficent spirit of His religion; in the un- 
laboured simplicity of the language in which He unfolds His high powers 
and the sublime truths of religion ; or in the good sense, the knowledge of 
human nature which He always discovers in His estimate and treatment of 
the different classes of men with whom He acted? .. . . The truth is, that, 
remarkable as was the character of Jesus, it was distinguished by nothing 
more than by calmness and self-possession.’ 

« Cf. Guizot, Méditations sur Essence de la Religion Chrétienne. Paris, 
1864, pp. 324-326. 

Iv | 


204 Our Lord’s claim to be Divine 


just so much dogma as we wish to deny, and to leave the rest 
really intact. It is no hardship to reason that we cannot deny 
the conclusion of a proposition of Euclid, without impugning 
the axioms which are the basis of its demonstration. It is no 
hardship to faith that we cannot deny the Divinity of Jesus, 
without casting a slur upon His Human Character. There are 
fatal inclines in the world of religious thought; and even if men 
deem it courteous to ignore them, such courtesy is scarcely 
charitable. If our age does not guide anxious minds by its 
loyal adherence to God’s Revelation, its very errors may have 
their uses; they may warn us off ground, on which Reason can-' 
not rest, and where Faith is imperilled, by enacting before our 
eyes a reductio ad absurdum or a reductio ad horribile, 

Of a truth the alternative before us is terrible; but can 
devout and earnest thought falter for a moment in the agony 
of its suspense ? Surely it cannot. The moral Character of 
Christ, viewed in connexion with the preternatural facts of His 
Human Life, will bear the strain which the argument puts upon 
it*. It is easier for a good man to believe that, in a world 
where he is encompassed by mysteries, where his own being 
itself is a consummate mystery, the Moral Author of the wonders 
around him should for great moral purposes have taken to Him- 
self a created form, than that the one Human Life which realizes 
the idea of humanity, the one Man Who is at once perfect 
strength and perfect tenderness, the one Pattern of our race in 
Whom its virtues are combined, and from Whom its vices are 
eliminated, should have been guilty, when speaking about Him- 
self, of.an arrogance, of a self-seeking, and of an insincerity 
which, if admitted, must justly degrade Him far below the moral 
level of millions among His unhonoured worshippers. It is 
easier, in short, to believe that God has consummated His works 
of wonder and of mercy by a crowning Self-revelation in which 
mercy and beauty reach their climax, than to close the moral 


x Channing, Works, ii. 61. ‘I know not what can be added to heighten 
the wonder, reverence, and love, which are due to Jesus. When I consider 
Him, not only as possessed with the consciousness of an unexampled and 
unbounded majesty, but as recognising a kindred nature in all human beings, 
and living and dying to raise them to a participation of His divine glories ; 
and when I see Him under these views allying Himself to men by the 
tenderest ties, embracing them with a spirit of humanity which no insult, 
injury, or pain could for a moment repel or overpower, I am filled with 
wonder as well as reverence and love. I feel that this character is not of 
human invention, that it was not assumed through fraud or struck out by 
enthusiasm ; for it is infinitely above their reach.’ 

: [ LECT. 


warranted by Fis Works and Character. 205 


eye to the brightest spot that meets it in human history, and— 
since a bare Theism reproduces the main difficulties of Chris- 
tianity without any of its compensations—to see at last in man’s 
inexplicable destiny only the justification of his despair. Yet 
the true alternative to this frightful conclusion is in reality a 
frank acceptance of the doctrine which is under consideration in 
these lecturesy. For Christianity, both as a creed and as a life, 
depends absolutely upon the Personal Character of its Founder. 
Unless His virtue was only apparent, unless His miracles were 
nothing better than a popular delusion, we must admit that His 
Self-assertion is justified, even in the full measure of its blessed 
and awful import. We must deny the antagonism which is said 
to exist between the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity and the history 
of His human manifestation. We must believe and confess that 
the Christ of history is the Christ of the Catholic Creed. 
Eternal Jesus! it is Thyself Who hast thus bidden us either 
despise Thee or worship Thee. Thou wouldest have us despise 
Thee as our fellow-man, if we will not worship Thee as our God. 
Gazing on Thy Human beauty, and listening to Thy words, we 
cannot deny that Thou art the Only Son of God Most High ; 
disputing Thy Divinity, we could no longer clearly recognise 
Thy~ Human perfections, But if our ears hearken to Thy 
revelations of Thy greatness, our souls have already been won 
to Thee by Thy truthfulness, by Thy lowliness, and by Thy love. 
Convinced by these Thy moral glories, and by Thy majestic 
exercise of creative and healing power, we believe and are sure 
that Thou hast the words of eternal life. Although in unveiling 


y Channing might almost seem to have risen for a moment to the full 
faith of the Church of Christ in the following beautiful words. Works, ii. 57: 
41 confess when I can escape the deadening power of habit, and can receive 
the full import of such passages as the following: ‘‘Come unto Me all ye 
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest ;” “ I am come to 
seek and to save that which was lost;” ‘‘ He that confesseth Me before men, 
him will I confess before My Father in Heaven;” ‘‘Whosoever shall be " 
ashamed of Me before men, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when 
He cometh in the glory of the Father with the holy angels;” “In My 
Father’s house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for you ;” I say, 
when I can succeed in realising the import of such passages, I feel myself 
listening to a being such as never before and never since spoke in human 
language. I am awed by the consciousness of greatness which these 
simple words express; and when I connect this greatness with the proofs of 
Christ’s miracles, I am compelled to speak with the centurion, ‘‘ Truly this 
was the Son of God.”’ Alas! that this language does not mean what we 
might hope, is too certain from other passages in his writings. See e.g. 
Works, ii. 510: ‘Christ is a being distinct from the one Gon.’ 

IV | 


206 The Christ of history ἐς the Christ of dogma. 


Thyself before Thy creatures, Thou dost stand from age to age 
at the bar of hostile and sceptical opinion; yet assuredly from 
age to age, by the assaults of Thine enemies no less than in the 
faith of Thy believing Church, Thou art justified in Thy sayings 
and art clear when Thou art judged. Of a truth, Thou art the 
King of Glory, O Christ ; Thou art the Everlasting Son of the 
Father. | 


[ Lect. 


LECTURE Υ. 


THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY IN THE 
WRITINGS OF ST. JOHN. 


That Which was from the beginning, Which we have heard, Which we have 
seen with our eyes, Which we have looked upon, and our hands have 
handled, of the Word of Life; (for the Life was manifested, and we have 
seen It, and bear witness, and shew unto you that Eternal Life, Which 
was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That Which we have 
seen and heard declare we unto you.—1 St. JOHN i. I-3. 


ΑΝ attempt was made last Sunday to determine, from the re- 
corded language of Jesus Christ, what was the verdict of His 
Own consciousness, expressed as well as implied, respecting the 
momentous question of His higher and Eternal Nature. But 
we were incidentally brought face to face with a problem, the 
fuller consideration of which lies naturally in the course of the 
present discussion. It is undeniable that the most numerous 
and direct claims to Divinity on the part of our Lord are to be 
found in the Gospel of St. John. ‘While this fact has a signi- 
ficance of a positive kind which will be noticed presently, it 
also involves the doctrine before us in the entanglement of a 
large critical question. To leave this question undiscussed 
would, under existing circumstances, be impossible. To discuss 
it, within the limits assigned to the lecturer, and even with a 
very moderate regard to the amount of details which it neces- 
sarily involves, must needs make a somewhat unwonted demand, 
as you will indulgently bear in mind, upon the patience and 
attention of the audience. 

If the Book of Daniel has been recently described as the 
_ battle-field of the old Testament, it is not less true that 

St. John’s Gospel is the battle-field of the New. It is well 
understood on all sides that no question of mere dilettante 


v] 


208  Larliest objections to St. Fohn’s Gospel. 


criticism is at stake when the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel 
is challenged. The point of this momentous enquiry lies close 
to the very heart of the creed of Christendom ; 


‘ Neque enim levia aut ludicra petuntur 
Premia; sed Turni de vit4 et sanguine certant®.’ 


Strange and mournful it may well seem to a Christian that the 
pages of the Evangelist of Divine love should have been the 
object of an attack so energetic, so persevering, so inventive, so 
unsparing! Strange indeed such vehement hostility might be 
deemed, if only it were not in harmony with that deep instinct 
of our nature which forbids neutrality when we are face to face 
with high religious truth ; which forces us to take really, if not 
avowedly, a side respecting it ; which constrains us to hate or 
to love, to resist or to obey, to accept or to reject it. If St. 
John’s Gospel had been the documentary illustration of some 
extinct superstition, or the title-deed of some suppressed founda- 
tion, at best capable of attracting the placid interest of studious 
antiquarianism, the attacks which have been made on it might 
well have provoked our marvel. As it is, there is no room for 
legitimate wonder, that the words of the Evangelist, like the 
Person of the Master, should be a stoné of stumbling and a rock 
of offence. For St. John’s Gospel is the most conspicuous 
written attestation to the Godhead of Him Whose claims upon 
mankind can hardly be surveyed without passion, whether it be 
the passion of adoring love, or the passion of vehement and 
determined enmity. 

I. From the disappearance of the obscure heretics called 
Alogi, in the later sub-apostolic age, until the end of the seven- 
teenth century, the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel was not 
questioned. The earliest modern objections to it seem to have 
been put forward in this country, and to have been based on the 
assumption of a discrepancy between the narrative of St. John 
and those of the first three Gospels. These objections were 
combated by the learned Leclerc ; and for well-nigh a century 
the point was thought to have been decided». The brilliant 
reputation of Herder secured attention for his characteristic 
theory that St. John’s Gospel describes, not the historical, but 
an ideal Christ. Herder was followed by several German writers, 


@ Virg. Ain. xii. 764, 765. 
b It ought perhaps to have been added that Evanson’s attack upon 
St. John in 1792 was answered by Dr. Priestley. [ 
LECT, 


The‘ Probabila’ of Bretschneder. 209 


who accepted conclusions which he had implied, and who 
expressly rejected the authenticity of the fourth Gospel®. But 
these negative criticisms were met in turn by the arguments of 
Roman Catholic divines like Hug, and of critics who were by no 
means loyal even to Lutheran orthodoxy, such as Eichhorn and 
Kuinoel. By their labours the question was again held to have 
been set at rest in the higher regions of German scholarship and 
free-thinking. This second settlement was rudely disturbed by 
the publication of the famous ‘ Probabilia’ of Bretschneider, the 
learned superintendent of Gotha, in the year 18204. Repro- 
ducing the arguments which had been advanced by the earlier 
negative speculation, and adding others of his own, Bretschneider 
rekindled the discussion. He exaggerated the contrast between 
the representation of our Lord’s Person in St. John and that in 
the synoptists into a positive contradiction. Protestant Ger- 
many was then fascinated by the school of Schleiermacher, 
which, by the aid of a combination of criticism and mysticism 9, 
was’ groping its way back towards the creeds of the Catholic 
Church. Schleiermacher, as is well known, not only accepted 
the Church-belief respecting the fourth Gospel, but he found 
in that Gospel the reason for his somewhat reckless estimate of 
the other three. The sharp controversy which followed resulted 
in Bretschneider’s retractation of his thesis, and the impression 
produced by this retractation was not violently interfered with 
until 1835, when Dr. Strauss shocked the conscience of all that 
was Christian in Europe by the publication of his first ‘ Life of 
Jesus. Dr. Strauss’ position in respect of St. John’s Gospel 
was a purely negative one. He confined himself to asserting 
that St. John’s Gospel was not what the Church had always 
believed it’ to be, that it was not the work of the son of Zebedee. 
The school of Tiibingen aspired to supplement this negative 
criticism of Strauss by a positive hypothesis. St. John’s Gospel 
was held to represent a highly-developed stage of an orthodox 
gnosis, the growth of which presupposed the lapse of at least a 


¢ Especially by Dr. Ammon, preacher and professor of theology at Erlangen 
and Dresden successively. 

ἃ Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Johannis Apostoli indole et 
origine. Lipsiz, 1820. 

€ See more especially Schleiermacher’s Glawbenslehre, and compare Pro- 
fessor Auberlen’s account of the process through which, at Tiibingen, he ‘was 
led back, among other things, mainly by Schleiermacher’s mysticism, so full 
of life and spirit, to the sanctuary of religion, and learnt to sit again at the 
feet of the Redeemer.’ On Divine Revelation, pref. 


Vv] P 


ad 
ἊἋ 
= 
πὸ 


210 Lheory of the later Tiibingen school. 


century since the age of the Apostles. It was decided by the 
leading writers of the school of Tibingen, by Drs. Baur, 
Schwegler, and Zeller, that the fourth Gospel was not ‘composed 
until after the year A.D. 160. And, although this opinion may 
have been slightly modified by later representatives of the 
Tiibingen school, such as Hilgenfeld ; the general position, that 
the fourth Gospel was not written before the middle of the 
second century, is held by disciples of that school as one of 
its very fundamental tenets. 

Here then it is necessary to enquire, what was the belief of 
the second century itself, as to the date and authenticity of 
St. John’s Gospel. 

Now it is scarcely too much to assert that every decade of the 
second century furnishes its share of proof that the four Gospels 
as a whole, and St. John’s in particular, were to the Church of 
that age what they are to the Church of the present. Beginning 
at the end of the century, we may observe how general at that 
date was the reception of the four Gospels throughout the 
Catholic Church. Writing at Lyons, in the last decade of the 
century, St. Irenzeus discourses on various cosmical and spiritual 
analogies to the fourfold form of the Gospel narrative (εὐαγγέλιον 
τετράμορφον) in a strain of mystical reflection which implies that 
the co-ordinate authority of the four Gospels had been already 
long established ἢ St. Irenzeus, it is well known, had sat at the 


feet of St. Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John. 


St. Irenzus, in his letter to the erring Florinus, records with 
reverent affection what Polycarp had told him of the lessons 
which he had personally learnt from John and the other disciples 
of Jesus&. Now is it barely probable that Irenzeus should have 


f St. Treneus, adv. Her. iii. 11. 8: ἐξ ὧν pavepdy, ὅτι 6 τῶν ἁπάντων 
τεχνίτης Λόγος. 6 καθήμενος. ἐπὶ τῶν Χερουβὶμ καὶ συνέχων τὰ πάντα, φανερω- 
θεὶς τοῖς neh pe ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν τετράμορφον τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, ἑνὶ δὲ πνεύματι 
συνεχόμενον. γος ee γὰρ τὰ Χερουβὶμ τετραπρόσωπα' καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα αὖ- 
τῶν, εἰκόνες τὴν πραγματείας τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ... Καὶ τὰ εὐαγγέλια οὖν 


τούτοις σύμφωνα, ἐν οἷς ἐγκαθέζεται Χριστός. Τὸ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ ᾿Ιωάννην, τὴν | 


ἀπὸ τοῦ ΠΠατρὺς ἡγεμονικὴν avTov..... καὶ ἔνδοξον γενεὰν διηγεῖται, λέγων" 
ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὃ Λόγος. 

& St. Trenzus, fragment, vol. 1. p. 822, ed. Stieren: εἶδον γάρ σε, παῖς ὧν 
ἔτι ἐν τῇ κάτω ᾿Ασίᾳ παρὰ τῷ Πολυκάρπῳ, λαμπρῶς πράττοντα ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ 
: αὐλῇ, καὶ πειρώμενον εὐδοκιμεῖν παρ᾽ αὐτῷ" μᾶλλον γὰρ τὰ τότε διαμνημονεύω 
τῶν ἔναγχος γινομένων᾽ (αἱ γὰρ ἐκ παίδων μαθήσεις, συναύξουσαι τῇ ψυχῇ, 
ἑνοῦνται αὐτῇ) ὥστε με δύνασθαι εἰπεῖν καὶ τὸν τόπον, ἂν ᾧ ᾧ καθεζόμενος, διε- 
λέγετο ὃ μακάριος Πολύκαρπος, καὶ τὰς προσόδους αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς εἰσόδους καὶ τὸν 
χαρακτῆρα τοῦ βίου καὶ τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἰδέαν καὶ τὰς διαλέξεις ἃς ἐποιεῖτο 
πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος, καὶ τὴν μετὰ ᾿Ιωάννου συναναστροφὴν as ἀπήγγελλε, rf: Thy 

LECT, 


nee 


— Saint Fohn’s Gospel in the Second Century. 21% 


imagined that a literary forgery, which is asserted to have been 
produced at a date when he was himself a boy of twelve or four- 


| teen years of age, was actually the work of the Apostle John»? 
_ At Carthage, about the same time, Tertullian wrote his great 


work against the heretic Marcion?, Tertullian brought to the 
discussion of critical questions great natural acuteness, which 
had been sharpened during his early life by his practice at the 


_ African bar. Tertullian distinguishes between the primary, or 


actually apostolical rank of St. Matthew and St. John, and the 
lower standing of St. Mark and St. Luke, as being apostolical 
men of a secondary degree*; but he treats all four as inspired 
writers of an authority beyond discussion!. Against Marcion’s 
mutilations of the sacred text Tertullian fearlessly appeals to the 
witness of the most ancient apostolical Churches. Tertullian’s 
famous canon runs thus: ‘Si constat id verius quod prius, id 
prius quod et ab initio, id ab initie quod ab apostolis, pariter 
ubique constabit, id esse ab apostolis traditum, quod apud eccle- 
sias apostolorum fuerit sacrosanctum™,’ But what would have 
been the worth of this appeal if it could have been even suspected 
that the last Gospel was really written when Tertullian was a 


boy or even a young man? At Alexandria, almost contempo- 
_ raneously with Tertullian, St. Clement investigated the relation 


TOV λοιπῶν τῶν ἑωρακότων τὸν Κύριον, καὶ ws ἀπεμνημόνευε τοὺς λόγους ad- 
τῶν" καὶ περὶ τοῦ Κυρίου τίνα ἣν ἃ παρ᾽ ἐκείνων ἀκηκόει, καὶ περὶ τῶν δυνάμεων 
αὐτοῦ, καὶ περὶ τῆς διδασκαλίας, ὧς παρὰ τῶν αὐτοπτῶν τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ Λόγου 
παρειληφὼς 6 Πολύκαρπος, ἀπήγγελλε πάντα σύμφωνα ταῖς γραφαῖς. Cf. Eus. 
Hist. Eccl. v. 20. St. Irenaeus succeeded St. Pothinus in the see of Lyons, 
Pothinus was martyred A.p. 177, and Ireneus died a.p. 202. 

h Adv. Her. iii. 1. St. Irenzeus was probably born about A.D. 140. 

i Tertullian was born at Carthage about A.p.160. Cave places his con- 
version to Christianity at a.p, 185, and his lapse into the Montanist heresy 
at A.D.199. Dr. Pusey (Libr. of Fathers) makes his conversion later, 
A.D. 195, and his secession from the Church a.p. 201. 

k Adv. Marc. iv. c. 2: ‘Constituimus imprimis evangelicum instrumentum 
apostolos auctores habere, quibus hoc munus evangelii promulgandi ab Ipso 


_ Domino sit impositum. Si et apostolicos, non tamen solos, sed cum apostolis 


et post apostolos, quoniam predicatio discipulorum suspecta fieri posset de 


© gloriz studio, si non adsistat illi auctoritas magistrorum, immo Christi, que 


FTL RS Δ we > 


MELD BE: BERS μων ἐᾷν BT ΜΒ ΚΑ TT δὼ ὅδ ΤΣ | Sh eae 
᾿ 


| magistros apostolos fecit. Denique nobis fidem ex apostolis Joannes et 
_ Matthzeus insinuant, ex apostolicis Lucas et Marcus instaurant.’ 


1 Adv. Mare. iv. c. 5: ‘ Eadem auctoritas ecclesiarum apustolicarum ceteris 


᾿ς quoque patrocinabitur Evangeliis, que proinde per illas et secundum illas 
_ habemus, Joannis dico et Matthei, licet et Marcus quod edidit Petri 
_ affirmetur, cujus interpres Marcus. Nam et Luce digestum Paulo adscribere 
_ solent. Capit magistrorum videri que discipuli promulgarint.’ 


m Adv. Marcion. iv. 5. 


Ἷ V | P32 


212 Waetness borne to Saint Fohn’s Gospel 


of the synoptic Gospels to St. John4, and he terms the latter 
the εὐαγγέλιον πνευματικόνο, It is unnecessary to say that the 
intellectual atmosphere of that famous Greeco-Egyptian school 
would not have been favourable to any serious countenance of a 
really suspected document. At Rome St. John’s Gospel was 
certainly received as being the work of that Apostle in the year 
170. This is clear from the so-termed Muratorian fragment ? ; 
and if in receiving it the Roman Church had been under a delu- 
sion so fundamental as is implied by the Tiibingen hypothesis, 
St.John’s own pupil Polycarp might have been expected to have 
corrected his Roman brethren when he came to Rome in the 
year 163. In the farther East, St. John’s Gospel had already 
been translated as a matter of course into the Peschito Syriac 
version. It had been translated in Africa into the Latin Versio - 
Italat. At or soon after the middle of the century two works 


n Westcott, Canon of the New Testament, 2nd ed. p.104. See Mr. 
Westcott’s remarks on St. Clement’s antecedents and position in the Church, 
ibid. pp. 298, 299. St. Clement lived from about 165 to 220. He flourished 
as a Christian Father under Severus and Caracalla, 193-220. 

ο Kus. Hist. Eccl. vi. 14, condensing Clement’s account, says, τὸν μέντοι 
᾿Ιωάννην ἔσχατον συνιδόντα ὅτι τὰ σωματικὰ ἐν τοῖς εὐαγγελίοις δεδήλωται, 
προτραπέντα ὑπὸ τῶν γνωρίμων, Πνεύματι θεοφυρηθέντα, πνευματικὸν ποιῆσαι 
εὐαγγέλιον. 

P Westcott on the Canon, p.170. The Muratorian fragment. claims to 
have been written by a contemporary of Pius I., who probably ruled the 
Roman Church from about a.p. 142 to 157. ‘ Pastorem vero nuperrimé 
temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Hermas conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis 
Rome ecclesie Pio episcopo fratre ejus.’ Cf. Hilgenfeld, Der Kanon und die 
Kritik des N. T., p. 39, sqq. 

ἃ On the difficulty of fixing the exact date of the Peschito, see Mr. 
Westcott’s remarks, Canon of New Testament, pp. 206-210. Referring 
(1) to the Syriac tradition of its Apostolic origin at Edessa, repeated by 
Gregory Bar Hebreeus; (2) to the necessary existence of an early Syriac 
version, implied in the controversial writings of Bardesanes; (3) to the quo- 
tations of Hegesippus from the Syriac, related by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iv. 
22); (4) to the antiquity of the language of the Peschito as compared with 
that of St. Ephrem, and the high authority in which this version was held by 
that Father ; (5) to the liturgical and general use of it by heretical as well as 
orthodox Syrians; and (6) to the early translations made from it ;—Mr. 
Westcott concludes that in the absence of more copious critical resources 
which might serve to determine the date of this version on philological 
grounds, ‘there is no sufficient reason to desert the opinion which has ob- Ὁ 
tained the sanction of the most competent scholars, that its formation is to 
be fixed within the first half of the second century. (p. 211.) That it was 
complete then in A.D. 150-160, we may assume without risk of serious error. 

τ This version must have been made before A.p. 170. ‘How much more 
ancient it really is cannot yet be discovered. Not only is the character of the 
version itself a proof of its extreme age, but the mutual relation of oo 

LECT. 


by Catholics of the Second Century. 213 


were published which implied that the four Gospels had long 


been received as of undoubted authority: I refer to the Harmo- 


nies of Theophilus’, Bishop of Antioch, and of Tatian t, the hete- 
rodox pupil of St. Justin Martyr. St. John is quoted by either 
writer independently, in the work which was addressed by Theo- 
philus to Autolycus4, and in the Apology of Tatian*. When, 
about the year 170, Apollinaris of Hierapolis points out the 
bearings of the different evangelical narratives upon the Quarto- 
deciman controversy, his argument implies a familiarity with 
St.John. Apollinaris refers to the piercing of our Lord’s Sidey, 
and Polycrates of Ephesus speaks of John as the disciple who 
lay on the bosom of Jesus%. Here we see that the last Gospel 
must have been read and heard in the Christian Churches with 
a care which dwells upon its distinctive peculiarities. It is 
surely inconceivable that a work of such primary claim to speak 
on the question of highest interest for Christian believers could 
have been forged, widely circulated, and immediately received 
by Africans, by Romans, by Gauls, by Syrians, as a work of an 
Apostle who had passed to his rest some sixty years before. 
And, if the evidence before us ended here, we might fairly infer 
that, considering the difficulties of communication between 
Churches in the. sub-apostolic age, and the various elements of 
moral and intellectual caution, which, as notably in the case of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, were likely to delay the cecumenical 


parts of it shew that it was made originally by different hands; and if so, it 
is natural to conjecture that it was coeval with the introduction of Chris- 
tianity into Africa, and the result of the spontaneous effort of African 
Christians.’ (Westcott on the Canon of the New Testament, pp. 224, 225.) 
Mr. Westcott shews from Tertullian (Adv. Prax. c. 5; De Monog. c. 11) 
that at the end of the century the Latin translation of St. John’s Gospel had 
been so generally circulated in Africa, as to have moulded the popular theo- 
logical dialect. (Ibid. pp. 218, 219.) 

_ 8 At latest Theophilus was bishop from a.p. 168 to 180. St. Jerome 
says: ‘Theophilus . .. quatuor evangelistarum in unum opus dicta com- 
pingens, ingenii sui nobis monumenta dimisit.’ Epist. 121 (al. 151) ad 
Algas. c. 6. 

t Kus. Hist. Eccl. iv. 29: ὁ Tariavos συνάφειάν τινα καὶ συναγωγὴν οὖκ οἶδ᾽ 
ὅπως τῶν εὐαγγελίων συνθεὶς τὸ Διὰ τεσσάρων τοῦτο προσωνόμασεν. Theo- 
doret, Her. Fab. i. 20; Westcott, Canon, pp. 279, 280, 5644. 

u Ad Autol. ii. 31. p.174, ed. Wolf. Cf. St. John i. 1, 3. Theophilus is 
_ the first writer who quotes St. John by name. 

x Orat. contr. Grec. c. 4 (St. John iv. 24); 6. 5 (Ibid. i. 1); 6. 13 
(Ibid. i. 5); 6. 19 (Ibid. i. 3). 

y Chron. Pasch. p. 14; cf. St. John xix. 34; Routh, i. 160, sq.; Westcott, 
Canon of New Testament, pp. 198, 199. 

e  Apud Kus. v. 24. Cf. St. John xiii. 23, xxi. 20. 
v] 


214  Wetness borne to Saint Fohn’s Gospel 


reception of a canonical book, St. John’s Gospel must have been 
in existence at the beginning of the second century. 

But the evidence does not desert us at this point. Through 
Tatian we ascend into the earlier portion of the century as 
represented by St. Justin Martyr. It is remarkable that 
St. Justin’s second Apology, written in 161, contains fewer 
allusions to the Gospels than the earlier Apology written in 
138, and than the intermediate composition of this Father, his 
Dialogue with the Jew Trypho. Now passing by recent theories © 
respecting a Gospel of the Hebrews or a Gospel of Peter, by 
which an endeavour has been made to weaken St. Justin’s 
witness to the synoptic Evangelists, let us observe that his 
testimony to St. John is particularly distinct. Justin’s emphatic 
reference of the doctrine of the Logos to our Lord», not to — 
mention his quotation of John the Baptist’s reply to the mes- 
sengers of the Jews®, and of our Saviour’s language about the 
new birth¢d, makes his knowledge of St. John’s Gospel much 
more than a probability®. Among the great Apostolic fathers, 
St. Ignatius alludes to St. John in his Letter to the Romansf, 
and St. Polycarp quotes the Apostle’s first Epistles. In these 
sub-apostolic writings there are large districts of thought and 


a On the identity of the ‘Gospel of the Hebrews’ with the original Hebrew 
draught of the Gospel of St. Matthew, see the remarks of Tischendorf in his 
pamphlet, Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? pp. 17-19. To that 
admirable compendium I am indebted for several remarks in the text of this 
and the following pages. 

b Cf. Tischendorf, Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? p. 16: * Die 
Uebertragung des Logos auf Christus, von der uns keine Spur weder in der 
Synoptikern noch in den dltesten Parallelschriften derselben vorliegt, an 
mehreren Stellen Justins von Johannes abzuleiten ist.’ 

¢ Ibid. Dialog. cum Tryph. 88. Cf. St. John i. 20. 

ἃ Apolog. i. 61: καὶ yap 6 Χριστὸς εἶπεν᾽ ‘Av μὴ ἀναγεννηθῆτε, ov μὴ 
εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν" “Ort δὲ καὶ ἀδύνατον εἰς Tas μήτρας 
τῶν τεκουσῶν τοὺς ἅπαξ γενομένους ἐμβῆναι φανερὺν πᾶσίν ἐστι. Cf. Westcott, 
Canon of the New Testament, p. 130. 

e Cf. however Mr. Westcott’s remarks (Canon of the New Testament, 
p- 145) on the improbability of St. John’s being quoted in apologetic writings 
addressed to Jews and heathen. St. Justin nevertheless does ‘ exhibit types 
of language and doctrine which, if not immediately drawn from St. John (why 
not ὃ), yet mark the presence of his influence and the recognition of his 
authority.’ Westcott, Ibid. Besides the passages already alluded to, St. 
Justin appears to refer to St. John xii. 49 in Dialog. cum Tryph. c. 56; to 
St. John i. 13 in Dialog. c. 63; to St. John vii. 12 in Dialog. c. 69; to St. 
John i. 12 in Dialog. c. 123. Cf. Liicke, Comm. Ev. Joh. p. 34, sqq. 

f St. Ign. ad. Rom.c. 7. Cf. St. John vi. 32, 48, 53, xvi. 11. 

s Ep. ad Phil. c. 7. Cf. 1 St. John iv. 3. 

[ LECT. 


᾿ by Catholics of the Second Century. 215 


expression, of a type unmistakeably Johannean}, which, like 
St. Justin’s doctrine of the Logos, witness no less powerfully to 
the existence of St. John’s writings than direct citations. The 
Tiibingen writers lay emphasis upon the fact that in the short . 
fragment of Papias which we possess, nothing is said about 
St. John’s Gospeli. But at least we have no evidence that 
Papias did not speak of it in that larger part of his writings 
which has been lostj; and if his silence is a valid argument 
against the fourth Gospel, it is equally available against the 
Gospel of St. Luke, and even against each one of those four 
Epistles which the Tiibingen writers themselves recognise as the 
work of St. Paul. 

The testimony of the Catholic Church during this century is 
supplemented by that of the contemporary heretics. St. Ireneus 
has pointed out how the system of the celebrated Gnostic, 


h Cf. St. Barn. Ep. v. vi. xii. (cf. St. John iii. 14); Herm. Past. Simil. ix. 12 
(cf. Ibid. x. 7, 9, xiv. 6); St. Ignat. ad Philad. 7 (cf. Ibid. iii. 8); ad Tral. 8 
(cf. Ibid. vi. 51) ; ad Magnes. 7 (cf. Ibid. xii. 49, x. 30, xiv. 11); ad Rom. 7 
(cf. Ibid. vi. 32). 

i Meyer, Evan. Johann. Hinl. p. 14: ‘ Die Continuitat [i.e. of the evidence 
in favour of the fourth Gospel] geht sowohl von Irenzeus iiber Polycarp, als 
auch von Papias, sofern diesem der Gebrauch des ersten Briefs Joh. bezeugt 
ist, tiber den Presbyter Johannes, auf den Apostel selbst zuriick. Dass aber 
das Fragment des Papias das Evangel. Joh. nicht erwihnt, kann nichts 
verschlagen, da es tiberhaupt keine schriftlichen Quellen, aus welchen er seine 
Nachrichten geschépft habe, auffiihrt, vielméhr das Verfahren des Papias 
dahin bestimmt, dass er bei den Apostelschiilern die Aussagen der Apostel 
erkundet habe, und dessen ausdriicklichen Grundsatz ausspricht: οὐ γὰρ τὰ 
ἐκ τῶν βιβλίων τοσοῦτόν με ὠφελεῖν ὑπελάμβανον, ὅσον τὰ παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς 
καὶ μενούσης. Papias wirft hier die damals vorhandenen evangelischen 
Schriften (τῶν βιβλίων) deren eine Menge war (Luk. i. 1) alle ohne Auswahl 
zusammen, und wie er das Evangel. Matthei und das des Marcus mit 
darunter begriffen hat, welche beide er spiiter besonders erwahnt, so kann er 
auch das Evangel. Joh. mit bei τῶν βιβλίων gemeint haben, da Papias einen 
Begriff von kanonischen Evangelien als solchen offenbar noch nicht hat (verg]. 
Credn. Beitr. i. p. 23), und diese auszuzeichnen nicht veranlasst ist. "Wenn 
aber weiterhin Eusebius noch zwei Aussagen des Papias iiber die Evangelien 
des Mark. und Matthaus anfiihrt, so wird damit unser Evangelium nicht 
ausgeschlossen, welches Papias in anderen Theilen seines Buchs erwihnt 
haben kann, sondern jene beiden Aussagen werden nur deshalb bemerklich 
gemacht, weil sie iiber die Entstehung jener Evangelien etwas Absonderliches, 
besonders Merkwiirdiges enthalten, wie auch das als besonders bemerkens- 
werth von Eusebius angefiihrt wird, dass Papias aus zwei epistolischen 
Schriften (1 Joh. u. τ Petr.) Zeugnisse gebrauche, und eine Erzihlung habe, 
welche sich im Hebrier-Evangel. finde.’ Cf. also Westcott, Canon, p. 65. 

1 It should be added that Papias is stated by Eusebius (iii. 39) to have 
quoted St. John’s First Epistle, This he could hardly have done, without 
acknowledging St. John’s Gospel. 


Vv] 


216 Waotness borne to Saint Fohn’s Gospel 


Valentinus, was mainly based upon a perversion of St. John’s 
Gospelk, This assertion is borne out by that remarkable work, 
the Philosophumena of St. Hippolytus, which, as we in Oxford 
_well remember, was discovered some few years since at Mount 
Athos!, Of the pupils of. Valentinus, Ptolemezus quotes from 
the prologue of St. John’s Gospel in his extant letter to Flora™, 
Heracleon, another pupil, wrote a considerable commentary 
upon St.John®, MHeracleon lived about 150; Valentinus was 
a contemporary of Marcion, who was teaching at Rome about 
140. Marcion had originally admitted the claims of St. John’s 
Gospel, and only denied them when, for the particular purposes 
of his heresy, he endeavoured at a later time to demonstrate an 
opposition between St. Paul and St. John°. Basilides taught 
at Alexandria under Adrian, apparently about the year 120. 
Basilides is known to have written twenty-four books of com- 
mentaries on the Gospel? ; but if it cannot be certainly affirmed 
that some of these commentaries were on St. John, it is certain 
from St. Hippolytus that Basilides appealed to texts of St. John 
in favour of his system4, Before Basilides, in the two first 


* St. Irenzeus (Heer. iii. 11, 7) lays down the general position: ‘Tanta est 
circa Evangelia hee firmitas, ut et ipsi heretici testimonium reddant eis, et 
ex ipsis egrediens unusquisque eorum conetur suam confirmare doctrinam.’ 
After illustrating this from the cases of the Ebionites, Marcion, and the Ce- 
rinthians, he proceeds, ‘Hi autem qui a Valentino sunt, eo [sc. evangelio] 
quod est secundum Johannem plenissimé utentes, ad ostensionem conjuga- 
tionum suarum ; ex ipso detegentur nihil recté dicentes.’ ‘ Gewiss war (says 
Meyer) die ganze Theosophie des Valentin mit auf Johanneischem Grund 
und Boden erwachsen. . . . Die Valentinianische Gnosis mit ihren Aeonen, 
Syzygien u. 5. w. verhalt sich zum Prolog des Joh. wie das kiinstlich Gemachte 
und Ausgesponnene zum Einfachen und Schépferischen.’ (Hinl.in Joh. p. 12, 
note.) For an illustration of the truth of this, cf. St. Tren. adv. Her. i. 8, 5. 

1 Cf. Refut. Heer. vi. 35, init., for the use made by Valentinus of St. John x. 8. 

m Apud St. Epiph. adv. Heer. lib. i. tom. i. Her. 33; Ptol. ad Flor. Cf. 
St. John i. 3; also Stieren’s St. Irenzeus, vol. i. p. 924. 

n Fragments of Heracleon’s Commentary on St. John, collected from 
Origen, are published at the end of the first vol. of Stieren’s edition of 
St. Irenzeus, pp. 938-971. St. John iv. is chiefly illustrated by these remains 
of the great Valentinian commentator. Two points strike one on perusal of 
them: (1) that before Heracleon’s time St. John’s Gospel must have acquired, 
even among heretics, the highest authority ; (2) that Heracleon has con- 
tinually to resort to interpretations so forced (as on St. John i. 3, i. 18, 
ii. 17; cited by Westcott, Canon, p. 266, note) as ‘to prove sufficiently that 
St. John’s Gospel was no Gnostic work.’ 

ο Tertullian. adv. Marcion. iv. 3; De Carne Christi, c. 2; quoted by 
Tischendorf, Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? pp. 25, 26. 

- P Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 7, 7. 

a Refut. Her. vii. 22 (quoted by Tischendorf, ubi supr.), where Basilides 
uses St. John i. 9, ii. 4. 

[ LECT. 


ἘΣ 


by Fleretics of the Second Century. 217 


decades of the century, we find Ophitic Gnostics, the Naase- 
nians', and the Peratz’, appealing to passages in St. John’s 
Gospel, which was thus already, we may say in the year r1o, 
a recognised authority among sects external to the Catholic 
Church. 

It may further be observed that the whole doctrine of the 
Paraclete in the heresy of Montanus is a manifest perversion of 
the treatise on that subject in St. John’s Gospel, the wide 
reception of which it accordingly presupposest. The Alogi, 
who were heretical opponents of Montanism, rejected St. John’s 
Gospel for dogmatic reasons, which are really confirmatory of 
the general tradition in its favour". Nor may we forget Celsus, 
the keen and satirical opponent of the Christian faith, who 
wrote, even according to Dr. Hilgenfeld, between 160 and 170, 
but more probably, as is held by other authorities, as early as 
150. Celsus professes very ostentatiously to confine himself 
to the writings of the disciples of Jesus*; but he refers to 
St. John’s Gospel in a manner which would be utterly incon- 
ceivable if that book had been in his day a lately completed, or 
indeed a hardly completed forgery. 

This evidence might be largely reinforced from other quarters?, 
and especially by an examination of that mass of apocryphal 
literature which belongs to the earlier half of the second century, 


r Refut. Her. v. 6 sqq., 8 (St. John i. 3, 4); 6. 9 (Ibid. iv. 21, and iv. 10): 
quoted by Tischendorf. 

8 Ibid. v. 12 sqq., 16 (St. John iii. 17, i. r-4); c. 17 (Ibid. viii. 44). 

t See however Meyer, Einl. in Joh. p. 13, for the opinion that Montanism 
originally grew out of belief in the Parousia of our Lord. Baur, Christenthum, 
p- 213. The Paraclete of Montanus was doubtless very different from the 
Paraclete of St. John’s Gospel. Still St. John’s Gospel must have furnished 
the name; and it is probable that the idea of the Montanistic Paraclete is 
originally due to the same source, although by a rapid development, con- 
tortion, or perversion, the Divine Gift announced by our Lord had been ex- 
changed for Its heretical caricature. The rejection of the promise of the 
Paraclete alluded to by St. Irenzus (adv. Heer. iii. 11. 9) proceeded not from 
Montanists, but from opponents to Montanism, who erroneously identified 
the teaching of St. John’s Gospel with that heresy. 

u St. Epiph. Heer. li. 3. Cf. Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 227. 

x Origen, contr. Celsum, ii. 74. 

y Ibid. i. 67; cf. St. John ii. 18. Contr. Celsum, ii. 31, 36, 55; cf. 
St. John xx. 27. 

-2 E.g. the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, Eus. v. 1, which 
quotes St. John xvi. 2 as an utterance of our Lord Himself. Athenagoras, 
Leg. pro Christianis, 10: cf. St. John 1. 1-11, xvii. 21-23. The Clementine 
Homilies, xix. 22; cf. St. John ix. 2, 3, iii. 52, x. 9, 27. Recognitions, 
vi. 9; cf. St. John iii. 3-5, ii. 48, v. 23. Ibid. v.12; cf. St. John viii. 34. 
Υ] 


218 The Fourth Gospel certainly Saint Sohn's. 


and the relation of which to St. John’s Gospel has lately 
been very clearly exhibited by an accomplished scholar®. But 
we are already in a position to admit that the facts before us 
force back the date of St. John’s Gospel within the lines of the 
first century>, And when this is done the question of its 
authenticity is practically decided. It is irrational to suppose 
that a forgery claiming the name and authority of the beloved 
disciple could have been written and circulated beneath his very 
eyes, and while the Church was still illuminated by his oral 
teaching. Arbitrary theories about the time which is thought 
necessary to develope an idea cannot rightly be held to counter- 


balance such a solid block of historical evidence as we have been . 
considering. This evidence shews that, long before the year 


160, St. John’s Gospel was received throughout orthodox and 
heretical Christendom, and that its recognition may be traced 
up to the Apostolic age itself. Ewald shall supply the words 
with which to close the foregoing considerations. ‘Those who 
since the first discussion of this question have been really con- 
versant with it, never could have had and never have had a 
moment’s doubt. As the attack on St. John has become fiercer 
and fiercer, the truth during the last ten or twelve years has 
been more and more solidly established, error has been pursued 
into its last hiding-places, and at this moment the facts before 
us are such that no man who does not will knowingly to choose 
error and to reject truth, can dare to say that the fourth Gospel 
is not the work of the Apostle John°®’ 

Certainly. Ewald here expresses himself with vehemence. 
Some among yourselves may possibly be disposed to complain 


‘ 


® Tischendorf, Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? p. 35, sqq. 
That the Acta Pilati in particular were. composed at the beginning of the 
second century, appears certain from the public appeal to them which 
St. Justin makes in his Apology to the Roman Emperor. The Acta Pilati 
‘presuppose not only the synoptists, but particularly and necessarily the 
Gospel of St. John. It is not that we meet with a passage here and there 
quoted from that Gospel. If that were the case we might suspect later 
interpolation. The whole history of the condemnation of Jesus is based 
essentially upon St. John’s narrative; while in the accounts of the Cruci- 
fixion and the Resurrection, it is rather certain passages of the synoptists 
which are particularly suggested.’ 

b Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 232. ‘Rien n’est plus vain. que de vouloir 
faire sortir du mouvement des idées au second siécle ’Evangile, qui a pré- 
cisément donné le branle ἃ ce mouvement, et le domine aprés l’avoir 
enfanté.’ 

¢ Review of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, in the Gottingen Scientific Journal, 
5 Aug. 1863; quoted by Gratry, Jésus-Christ, p. 119. 

| [ LECT. 


\ 
4 


i tee πες 


(1) 72 ἐς supplementary to the first three. 219 


of him as being too dogmatic. For it may be that you have 
-made impatience of certainty a part of your creed; and you 


may hold that a certain measure of cautious doubt on all sub- 
jects, is inseparable from true intellectual culture. You may urge 
in particular that the weight of external testimony in favour of 
St. John’s Gospel does not silence the difficulties which arise 
upon an examination of its contents. You point to the use of 
a mystical and metaphysical terminology, to the repetition of 
‘abstract expressions, such as Word, Life, Light, Truth, Para- 
clete. You remark that St. John’s Gospel exhibits the ‘Life of 
our Lord under an entirely new aspect. Not to dwell im- 
moderately upon points of detail, you insist that the plan of our 
Lord’s life, the main scenes of His ministry, all His exhibitions 
of miraculous power save two, the form and matter of His dis- 
courses, nay, the very attitude and moral physiognomy of His 
opponents, are so represented in this Gospel as to interfere with 
your belief in its Apostolical origin. 

But are not these peculiarities of the Gospel explained when 
we consider the purpose with which it was written ? 

1. St. John’s Gospel is in the first place an historical sup- 
plement. It was designed to chronicle discourses and events 
which had been omitted in the narratives of the three preceding 
Evangelists. Christian antiquity attests this design with re- 
markable unanimity4, It is altogether arbitrary to assert that 
if St. John had seen the works of earlier Evangelists he would 
have alluded to them; and that if he had intended to supply 
the omissions of their narratives he would have formally an- 
nounced his intention of doing so®. It is sufficient to observe 
that the literary conventionalities of modern Europe were not 
those of the sacred writers, whether of the Synagoguef or of the 
Church. An inspired writer does his work without the self- 
consciousness of a modern composer; he is not necessarily 
eareful to define his exact place in literature, his precise obliga- 
tions to, or his presumed improvements upon, the labours of his 
predecessors. He is the organ of a Higher Intelligence ; he 


ἃ See especially the remarkable passage in Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 24, St. Epiph. : 
Heer, ii. 51. 

e These arguments of Liicke are noticed by Dr. Wordsworth, New Test. 
part i. p. 206. 

f ‘The later prophets of the Old Testament enlarge upon and complete 
the prophecies of the earlier. But they do not mention their names, or 
declare their own purpose to do what they do.’ Townson, pp. 134-147; 
quoted by Dr. Wordsworth, ubi supr. 


v1 


220 (2) Sacnt Fohn’s Gospel ts 


owes both what he borrows and what he is believed to originate 

to the Mind Which inspires him to originate, or Which guides 
him to select. While the stream of sacred truth is flowing forth 
from his entranced and burning soul, and is being forthwith 
crystallized in the moulds of an imperishable language, the 
eagle-eyed Evangelist does not stoop from heaven to earth for 
the purpose of guarding or reserving the rights of authorship, 
by displaying his care to acknowledge its obligations. Certainly 
St. John does repeat in part the narratives of his predecessorss&. 
But this repetition does not interfere with the supplementary 
character of his work as a wholeb. And yet his Gospel is not 
only or mainly to be regarded as an historical supplement. It 
exhibits the precision of method and the orderly development of 
ideas which are proper to a complete doctrinal essay or treatise. 
It is indeed rather a treatise illustrated by history, than a history 
written with a theological purpose. Viewed in its historical 
relation to the first three Gospels, it is supplemental to them ; 
but this relative character is not by any means an adequate 
explanation of its motive and function. It might easily have 
been written if no other Evangelist had written at all; it 
has a character and purpose which are strictly its own; it 
is part of a great whole, yet it is also, in itself, organically 
perfect. 

2. St. John’s Gospel is a polemical treatise. It is addressed 
to an intellectual world widely different from that which had 
been before the minds of the earlier Evangelists. The earliest 
forms of Gnostic thought are recognisable in the Judaizing 
theosophists whom St. Paul has in view in his Epistles to the 
Ephesians and the Colossians. These Epistles were written at 
the least some thirty years before the fourth Gospel. The 
fourth Gospel confronts or anticipates a more developed Gno- 
sticism ; although we may observe in passing that it certainly 
does not contain references to any of the full-grown Gnostic 


& Asin chaps. vi. and xii. 

h M. Renan admits the supplementary character of St. John’s Gospel, but 
attributes to the Evangelist a motive of personal pique in writing it. He was 
annoyed at the place assigned to himself in earlier narratives! ‘On est tenté 
de croire, que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les récits évangéliques qui 
circulaient, d’une part, y remarqua diverses inexactitudes, de l’autre, fut 
froissé de voir qu’on ne lui accordait pas dans l’histoire du Christ une assez 
grande place; qu’alors il commenga ἃ dicter une foule de choses qu’il savait 
mieux que les autres, avec [intention de montrer que, dans beaucoup de cas ow 
on ne parlait que de Pierre, tl avait figuré avec et avant lu.’ Vie de Jésus, 
pp. XXvii. XXviil. 

[ LECT. 


ee Oe eee 


a polemical treatese. 221 


systems which belong to the middle of the second century. The 
fourth Gospel is in marked opposition to the distinctive po- 
sitions of Ebionites, of Docete, of Cerinthians. But among 
these the Cerinthian gnosis appears to be more particularly 
contemplated. In its earlier forms especially, Gnosticism was 
as much a mischievous intellectual method as a formal heresy. 
The Gnostic looked upon each revealed truth merely in the 
light of an addition to the existing stock of materials ready to 
his hand for speculative discussion. He handled it accordingly 
with the freedom which was natural to a belief that it was-in no 
sense beyond the range of his intellectual grasp. He com- 
mingled it with his cosmical or his psychological theories ; he 
remodelled it; he submitted it to new divisions, to new com- 
binations. Thus his attitude toward Christianity was friendly 
and yet supercilious. But he threatened the faith with utter 
destruction, to be achieved by a process of eclectic interpretation 
Cerinthus was an early master of this art. Cerinthus as a 
Chiliastic Judaizer was naturally disposed to Humanitarianism. 
As an eclectic theorist, who had been trained in the ‘teaching of 
the Egyptiansi,’ he maintained that the world had been created 
by ‘some power separate and distinct from Him Who is above 
all.’ Jesus was not born of a virgin; He was the son of Joseph 
and Mary; He was born naturally like other men. But the 
tion Christ had descended upon Jesus after His baptism, in the 
form of a dove, and had proclaimed the unknown Father, and 
had perfected the virtues of Jesus. The spiritual impassible 
Christ had flown back to heaven on the eve of the Passion of 
Jesus; the altogether human Jesus of Cerinthus had suffered 
and had risen alone*, To this fantastic Christ of the Cerinthian 


i St. Hippolytus, Refut. Her. vii. 33. 

k St. Ireneus, i. 26: ‘Et Cerinthus autem quidam in Asia non a primo 
Deo factum esse mundum docuit, sed a virtute quédam valde separata et 
distante ab ea principalitate, que est super universa, et ignorante eum qui 
est super omnia, Deum. Jesum autem subjecit, non ex virgine natum 
(impossibile enim hoc ei visum est); fuisse autem Eum Joseph et Marie 
filium similiter ut reliqui omnes homines, et plus potuisse justitia et prudentia 
et sapientia ab hominibus. Et post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea 
principalitate que est super omnia, Christum figura columbe; et tunc an- 
nuntiasse incognitum Patrem et virtutes perfecisse ; in fine autem revoldsse 
iterum Christum de Jesu, et Jesum passum esse et resurrexisse ; Christum 
autem impassibilem perseverdsse, existentem spiritalem.’ When St. Epi- 
phanius represents Cerinthus as affirming that Jesus would only rise at the 
general resurrection, he seems to be describing the logical results of the 
heresy, not the actual doctrine which it embraced. (Her. xxviii. 6,) 

Vv] 


re 
v 
2 
an 
ae 
i 
— 
ae 
ΤΩ͂Ν 
Ae: 
~ aie 
Γ ΤΩΣ 
aa 
mires 
Ae 
= 


222 (3) Saznt Fohn’s Gospel teaches positive dogma. 


gnosis St. John opposes the counteracting truth of our Lord’s 
Divine and Eternal Nature, as manifested in and through His 
human life. This Nature was united to the Manhood of Jesus. 
from the moment of the Incarnation. It was not a transient 
endowment of the Person ef Jesus ; since it was Itself the seat 
of His Personality, although clothed with a human form. This 
Divine Nature was ‘glorified’ in Christ’s Passion, as also in 
His miracles and His Resurrection. St. John disentangles the 
Catholic doctrine from the negations and the speculations of 
Cerinthus ; he proclaims the Presence among men of the Divine 
’ Word, Himself the Creator of all things, incarnate in Jesus 
Christ. 

3. Thus St. John’s Gospel has also a direct, positive, dogmatic 
purpose. It is not merely a controversial treatise, as it is not 
merely an historical appendix. Its teaching is far deeper and 
Wider than would have been necessary, in order to refute the 
errors of Cerinthus. It teaches the highest revealed truth con- 
cerning the Person of our Lord. Its substantive and enduring 
value consists in its displaying the Everlasting Word or Son of 
God as historically incarnate, and as uniting Himself to His 
Church. 

The peculiarities of St. John’s Gospel are explained, when 
this threefold aspect of it is kept in view. As a supplementary 
narrative it presents us, for the most. part, with particulars 
concerning our Blessed Lord which are unrecorded ‘elsewhere. 
It meets the doubts which might naturally have arisen in the 
later Apostolical age, when the narratives of the earlier Evan- 
gelists had been for some time before the Church. If the 
question was raised, why, if Jesus was so holy and so super- 
natural a Person, His countrymen and contemporaries did not 
believe in Him, St. John shews the moral causes which account 
for their incredulity. He pourtrays the fierce hatred of the 
Jews against the moral truth which they had rejected; he 
exhibits this hatred as ever increasing in its intensity as the 
sanctity of Jesus shines out more and more brightly. If men 
asked anxiously for more proof that the Death and Resurrection 
of Jesus were real events, St. John meets that demand by 
recording his own experience as an eye-witness, and by carefully 
accumulating the witness of others. If it was objected that 
Christ’s violent Death was inconsistent with His Divine claims, 
St. John points out that it was strictly voluntary, and even 
that by it Christ’s true glorification was achieved. If the 
authority of the Apostles and of those who were succeeding 

| [ LECT. 


ese OO ΝΡ 
» 


Ee ee ΡΠ a ic, 
oe 5 χς ῥ 

. ye i 

. = 

ete 


Peculiarities in Saint Fohn explained. 1223 


them was popularly depreciated on the score of their being 
rude and illiterate men, St. John shews from the discourse 
in the supper-room that the claims of Apostles upon the 
dutiful submission of the Church did not depend upon any 
natural advantages which they possessed. Jesus had promised 
a Divine Comforter, Who was to guide them into the whole 
truth, and to bring to their minds whatever He had said 
to them! 

As a polemical writer, St. John selects and marshals his 
materials with a view to confuting, from historical data, the 
Humanitarian or Docetic errors of the time. St. John 15 
anxious to bring a particular section of the Life of Jesus to 
bear upon the intellectual world of Ephesus™. He puts for- 
ward an aspect of the original truth which was certain to 
command present and local attention; he is sufficiently in 
correspondence with the.age to which he ministers, and with 
the speculative temper of the men around him. He had been 
led to note and to treasure up in his thought certain phases 
of the teaching and character of Jesus with especial care. He 
had remembered more accurately those particular discourses, 
in which Jesus speaks of His eternal relation to the Father, 
and of the profound mystic communion of life into which He 
would enter with His followers through the Holy Spirit and 


the Sacraments. These cherished memories of St. John’s earlier 


years, unshared in their completeness by less privileged Apo- 
stles, were well fitted to meet the hard necessities of the Church 
during the closing years of the beloved disciple. To St. John 
the gnosis of Cerinthus must have appeared to be in direct 
contradiction to the sacred certainties which he had heard from 
the lips of Jesus, and which he treasured in his heart and 
memory. In order to confute the heresy which separated the 
man Jesus from the ‘ Alon’ Christ, he had merely to publish what 
he remembered of the actual words and works of Jesus®. His 
translation of those divine words may be coloured, by a phrase- 
ology current in the school which he is addressing, sufficiently 
to make them popularly intelligible. But the peculiarities of 


his language have been greatly exaggerated by criticism, while 


they are naturally explained by the polemical and positively 
doctrinal objects which he had in view. To these objects, the 


1Cf. Alford, Greek Test. vol. i. Prolegom. p. 60. | 
m St. Ireneus adv. Her. iii. 1. See Ebrard’s discussion of the objections 


which have been urged against this statement. Gospel History, pt. 2, 


div. 2, § 127. n Cf. Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 246. 
ἃ 


224  Pecularities in Saint Fohn explained. 


language, the historical arrangement, the selection from con- 
versations and discourses before unpublished, the few deeply 
significant miracles, the description of opponents by a generic 
name —the ‘ Jews’— which ignores the differences of character, 
class, and sect among them, and notices them only so far as 
they are in conflict with the central truth manifested in Jesus, 
—all contribute. But these very peculiarities of the fourth 
Gospel subserve its positive devotional and didactic aim even 
more directly than its controversial one®. The false gnosis 


ο The internal difficulties urged against St. John’s Gospel appear to be 
overborne by the weight of the external testimony, taken in conjunction 
with the characteristics and necessities of the later Apostolical age. These 
difficulties may however be very briefly summarized as follows :— 

1. As to time: | 

(a) ‘The fourth Gospel implies a long Ministry, with festivals for its 
landmarks,’ But the three, (Westcott, Study of Gospels, 267,) at 
least allow of a ministry as long as the fourth can require ; while 
reference to the festivals was natural in a narrative, the main scene 
of which is laid at Jerusalem. 

(8) ‘The fourth Gospel appears to place the crucifixion on Nisan 14, 
the three on Nisan 15.’ This real difficulty has been explained 
by various hypotheses, as 

e.g. (1) Of an anticipated passover, kept by our Lord, on Nisan 13, Bp. 

Ellicott, Huls. Lect. p. 322, and others. This is perhaps most satis- 
factory. The objection drawn from the observance of Nisan 14, by 
those churches in the second century which inherited St, John’s 


traditions, assumes that such observance was commemorative of the 


Last Supper, and not, as is probable, of our Lord’s Death. Cf. 
Meyer, Ev, Joh. Eimnl. p. 18. 

(2) Of a passover postponed by the chief priests. St. Chrys, Estius. 
Wordsworth. 

(3) Of a difference of computation, as to the true day of the Pass- 
over, owing to the variation between the Solar and Lunar 
reckonings. Petavins, qu, by Neale, Int. Hast. ch. ii. 1054. 

(4) Of a possible explanation of St. John’s language, (xviii. 28, &c.,) 
which would make it consistent with the date of Nisan 15, as that of the 
crucifixion. Dict, of Bible, vol. ii.720; St. Tho. Sum. p: iii, q, 46.a, 9. 

If none of these explanations be quite unobjectionable, they may fairly 
warn us against concluding with our present knowledge that the difficulty 
is by any means insuperable. 

2. As to the scene of Christ’s teaching :—‘ St. John places it chiefly in 
Judzea; the three in Galilee.’ But no Gospel professes to be a complete 
history of our Lord’s actions, and records of a Galilean and of a Judzan 
ministry respectively leave room for each other. Westcott on the Gospels, 
p. 265. 

3. As to the style of Christ’s teaching :—‘ Si Jésus parlait comme le veut 
Matthieu, il n’a pu parler comme le veut Jean.’ But, the difference of 
subjects, hearers, and circumstances in the two cases, taken in conjunction 
with the differing mental peculiarities of the Apostles who report our Lord’s 
words, will account for the difference of style. The phrases ~~ to be 

| LECT. 


a a 


TR νυν Ὁ δ Ange nee oe 
bP At λ = ond Ὧν ee 
i Tar 


Saint Fohn’s depth and simplicity. 255 


is refuted by an exhibition of the true. The true is set forth 
for the sake of Christian souls. These things ‘are written that 
ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of (tod ; and 
that believing ye might have life through His Name?P.’ 

We may perhaps have wondered how a Galilean fisherman 
could have been the author of a subtle and sublime theosophy, 
how the son of Zebedee could have appropriated the language 
of Athens and of Alexandria to the service of the Crucified. 
The answer is that St. John knew from experience the blessed . 
and tremendous truth that his Lord and Friend was a Divine 
Person. Apart from the guidance of the Blessed Spirit, 
St. John’s mental strength and refinement may be traced to 
the force of his keen interest in this single fact. Just as a 
desperate moral or material struggle brings to light forces and 
resources unused before, so an intense religious conviction fer- 
tilizes intellect, and developes speculative talent, not unfrequently 
in the most unlearned. Every form of thought which comes 
even into indirect contact with the truth'to which the soul 
clings adoringly, is scanned by it with deep and anxious interest, 
whether it be the interest of hope or the interest of apprehen- 
sion. St. John certainly is a theosophic philosopher, but he 
is only a philosopher because he is a theologian; he is such 
a master of abstract thought because he is so devoted to the 
Incarnate God. The fisherman of Galilee could never have 
written the prologue of the fourth Gospel, or have guided 
the religious thought of Ephesus, unless he had clung to this 
sustaining Truth, which makes him at once so popular and so 
profound. For St. John is spiritually as simple, as he is 
intellectually majestic. In this our day he is understood by 


peculiar to, and really of frequent occurrence in St. John are by no means 
unknown to the Synoptists. E.g. The antithesis between Light and darkness. 

4. As to the matter of Christ’s teaching :—Baur begs the whole question 
by saying that ‘the discourses in St. John could not be historical, since 
they are essentially nothing more than an explanation of the Logos-idea 
put forth by that writer. This might be true if the doctrine of the 
Logos had been the product of Gnostic speculations. But if Jesus was 


really the Divine Son, manifesting Himself as such to men, such language 


as that reported by St. John is no more than we should expect. St.John 
never represents our Lord as announcing His Divinity in the terms in 
which it is announced in the Prologue to the Gospel; he would have 
done so, had he really been creating a fictitious Jesus designed to illus- 
trate a particular theosophic speculation. This is discussed hereafter, 
p- 364. See Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 244; Luthardt, das Johanneische 
Evangelium, pp. 26-35. P St. John xx. 31. 


ἃ ἥρως Q 


j 
f 


226 | Doctrine of the Eternal Word 


the reiigious insight of the unlettered and the poor, while the 
learned can sometimes see in him only the weary repetition of 
metaphysical abstractions. .The poor understand this sublime 
revelation of God, the Creator of the world, as pure Light and 
Truth. They understand the picture of a moral darkness which 
commits and excuses sin, and which hates the light. They 
receive gratefully and believingly the Son of God, made Man, ~ 
and conquering evil by the laying down His Life. They follow, 
with the experience of their own temptations, or sins, or hopes, 
or fears, those heart-searching conversations with Nicodemus, 
with the Samaritan woman, with the Jews. In truth, St. John’s 
language and, above all, the words of Christ in St. John, are 
as simple as they are profound. They still speak peace and joy 
to little children; they are still a stumbling-block to, and a 
condemnation of, the virtual successors of Cerinthus. 

II. If there were nothing else to the purpose in the whole of 
the New Testament, those first fourteen verses of the fourth 
Gospel would suffice to persuade a believer in Holy Scripture of 
the truth that Jesus Christ is absolutely Gop. It is a mistake 
to regard those fourteen verses as a mere prefatory attack upon 
the gnosis of Cerinthus, having no necessary connexion with the 
narrative which follows, and representing nothing essential to 
the integrity of the Apostle’s thought. For, as Baur very truly 
observes, the doctrine of the prologue is the very fundamental 
idea which underlies the whole ‘ Johannean theology4.’ It is not 
enough to say that between the prologue and the history which 
follows there exists an intimate organic connexion. ‘The pro- 
logue is itself the beginning of the history. ‘It is impossible,’ 
says Baur, ‘to deny that “the Word made flesh™” is one and 
the same subject with the Man Christ Jesus on the one hand, 
and with the Word Who “was in the beginning, Who was with ἢ 
God, and Who was God,” on the other’.’ 

Taking then the prologue of St. John’s Gospel in connexion 
with the verses which immediately succeed it, let us observe that. 
St. John attaches to our Lord’s Person two names which to- 
gether yield a complete revelation of His Divine glory. Our 
Lord is called the ‘Word,’ and the ‘Only-begotten Son.’ It is 
doubtless true, as Neander observes, that ‘the first of these 
names was’ put prominently forward at Ephesus, ‘in order to 
lead those who busied themselves with speculations on the 


a Vorlesungen, p. 351. r St. John i. 14. 
s Baur, ubi sup. St. Johni. 1. 
3 [ LECT. 


271 the Prologue of Saint Fohn's Gospel. 2247 


Logos as the centre of all theophanies, from a mere religious 
idealism to a religious realism, to lead them in short to a 
recognition of God revealed in Christt.’ It has already been 


‘shewn that the Logos of St. John differs materially from the 


Logos of later Alexandrian speculation, while it is linked to 
great lines of teaching in the Old Testament. No reason can 
be assigned: why St. John had recourse to the word Logos at 
all, unless he was already in possession of the underlying fact 
to which this word supplied a philosophical form. If the word 
did express, in a form familiar to the ears of the men of Ephe- 
sus, a great truth which they had buried beneath a heap of 
errors, that truth, as Bruno Bauer admits, must have been 
held independently and previously by the Apostlet. The 
direct expression of that truth was St. John’s primary motive 
in using the word; his polemical and corrective action upon 
the Cerinthian gnosis was a secondary motive. 

By the word Logos, then, St. John carries back his history of 
our Lord to a point at which it has not yet entered into the 
sphere of sense and time. ‘In the four Gospels,’ says St. Augus- 
tine, ‘or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, the Apostle 
St. John, deservedly compared to an eagle, by reason of his 
spiritual understanding, has lifted his enunciation of truth to a 
far higher and sublimer point than the other three, and by this 


_ elevation he would fain have our hearts lifted up likewise. For 


ΝΥ ΟΣ ΝΞ i Bi aa i a 


the other three Evangelists walked, so to speak, on earth with 
our Lord as Man. Of His Godhead they said but a few things. 
But John, as if he found it oppressive to walk on earth, has 
opened his treatise as it were with a peal of thunder; he has 
raised himself not merely above the earth, and the whole com- 
pass of the air and heaven, but even above every angel-host, and 
every order of the invisible powers, and has reached even to Him 
by Whom all things were made, in that sentence, “In the begin- 
ning was the Word*.”’ 

Instead of opening his narrative at the Human Birth of our 
Lord, or at the commencement of His ministry, St. John places 
himself in thought at the starting-point (as we should conceive 


it) of all timey. Nay rather, it would seem that if mw. at the 


t Neander, Kirchengeschichte, p. 549; quoted by Tholuck, Ev. Johan. 
kap. I. 
u Kritik der Evangel. Geschichte des Joh. p. 5; quoted by Tholuck, ubi 


supra. x St. Aug. tr. 36 in Johan. 


Υ Meyer in loc. note: ‘ Vollig unexegetisch ist die Fassung der Socinianer 
(s. Catech. Racoy. p. 135, ed. Oeder): ἐν ἀρχῇ heisse in initio evangelit.’ 


| v] Q 2 


=a 


228 Doctrine of the Eternal Word 


beginning of Genesis signifies the initial moment of time itself ; 
ἐν ἀρχῇ rises to the absolute conception of that which is anterior 
to, or rather independent of, time?. Then, when time was not, 
or at a point to which man cannot apply his finite conception of 
time, there was—the Logos or Word. When as yet nothing had 
been made, He was. What was the Logos? Such a term, in a 
position of such moment, when so much depends on our rightly 
understanding it, has a moral no less than an intellectual claim 
upon us, of the highest order. We are bound to try to under- 
stand it, just as certainly as we are bound to obey the command 
to,love our enemies. No man who carries his morality into the 
sphere of religious thought can affect or afford to maintain, that 
the;fundamental idea in the writings of St. John is a scholastic 
cgnceit, with which practical Christians need not concern them- 
selves. And indeed St. John’s doctrine of the Logos has from 
the first been scrutinized anxiously by the mind of Christendom. 
It,could not but be felt that the term Logos denotes at the very 
least something intimately and everlastingly present with God, 
something as internal to the Being of God as thought is to the 
soul,of man. In truth the Divine Logos is God reflected in His 
own .eternal Thought ; in the Logos, God is His own Object. 
This Infinite Thought, the reflection and counterpart of God, 
subsisting in God as a Being or Hypostasis, and having a ten- 
dency to self-communication,—such is the Logos. The Logos 
is the Thought of God, not intermittent and precarious like 
human thought, but subsisting with the intensity of a personal 
form. The very expression seems to court the argument of 
Athenagoras, that since God could never have been ἄλογος, the 
Logos must have been not created but eternal. It suggests 


z Meyer in loc.: ‘ Johannes parallelisirt zwar den Anfang seines Evangel. 
mit dem Anfange der Genesis; aber er steigert den historischen Begriff 
mwa, welcher (Gen. i. 1) den Anfangsmoment der Zeit selbst bedeutet, 


zum absoluten Begriffe der Vorzeitlichkeit.? This might suffice to refute the 
assertion of a modern writer that St. John does not teach the Eternity of the 
Divine Word. ‘ Une des théses fondamentales de la spéculation ecclésiastique, 
c’est idée de l’éternité du Verbe. Depuis que le concile de Nicée en a fait 
une des pierres angulaires de la théologie Catholique, sa décision est restée 
Vhéritage commun de tous les syst¢mes orthodoxes. Eh bien! les écrits de 
Jean n’en parlent pas.’ Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 438. The author is mis- 
taken in attributing to ἐν ἀρχῇ a merely relative force, and thence arguing 
that if the Word is eternal, the world is eternal also (Gen. i. 1). Besides, 
Θεὸς jv 6 Λόγος. How is the Word other than eternal, if He is thus iden- 
tified with the ever-existing Being? 

8 Athenag. Suppl. pro Christ, 10 > (46 Ὁ. ed. Otto): εἶχεν αὐτὺς ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὸν 
Λόγον, ἀϊδίως λογιικὸς dv. 


[ LECT. . 


ee eee 


an the Prologue of Saint Fohn’s Gospel. 229 


the further inference that since reason is man’s noblest faculty, 
the Uncreated Logos must be at least equal with God. In any 
case it might have been asked why the term was used at all, if 
these obvious inferences were not to be deduced from it; but as 
a matter of fact they are not mere inferences, since they are 
warranted by the express language of St. John. St. John says 
that the Word was ‘in the beginning.’ The question then 
arises: What was His relation to the Self-existent Being? He 
was not merely παρὰ τῷ Ge, along with God, but πρὸς τὸν Θεόν. 
This last preposition expresses, beyond the fact of co-existence 
or immanence, the more significant fact of perpetuated inter- 
communion. ‘The face of the Everlasting Word, if we may dare 
so to express ourselves, was ever directed towards the face of the 
Everlasting Father®. But was the Logos then an independent 
being, existing externally to the One God? To conceive of an 
independent being, anterior to creation, would be an error at 
issue with the first truth of monotheism ; and therefore Θεὸς ἦν 
ὁ Λόγος. The Word is not merely a Divine Being, but He is in 
the absolute sense God¢. Thus from His eternal existence we 
ascend first to His distinct Personality, and then to the full truth 
of His substantial Godhead. 

Yet the Logos necessarily suggests to our minds the further 
idea of communicativeness; the Logos is Speech as well as 
Thought®. And of His actual self-communication St. John 


> St. John xvii. 5. 

© Meyer in loc.: “πρός bezeichnet das Befindlichsein des Logos bei Gott 
im Gesichtspunkte der Richtung der Gemeinschaft.? Bernhardy, Syntax, 
Ῥ. 205. 

ἃ Here is the essential difference between the Logos of St. John and the 
Logos of Philo. Meyer, who apparently holds Philo to have definitely con- 
sidered his Logos as a real hypostasis, states it as follows, in his note on the 
words καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὃ Λόγος. ‘Wie also Johannes, mit dem nichtartikulirten 
θεός kein niedrigeres Wesen, als Gott Selbst hat, bezeichnen will ; so unter- 
scheidet sich die Johanneische Logos-Idee bestimmt von derjenigen bei Philo, 
welcher θεός ohne Artikel im Sinne wesentlicher Unterordnung, ja, wie Er 
Selbst sagt, ἐν καταχρήσει (i. p. 655, ed. Mangey) vom Logos pridicirt ;— 
wie denn auch der Name 6 δεύτερος θεός, welchen er ihm giebt, nach ii. 
p. 625. Euseb. prep. Ev. vii. 13, ausdriicklich den Begriff eines Zwischen- 
wesens zwischen Gott und dem Menschen bezeichnen soll, nach dessen 
Bilde Gott den Menschen geschaffen hat. Dieser Subordinatianismus, nach 
welchem der Logos zwar μεθόριός τις θεοῦ φύσις, aber Tod μὲν ἐλάττων, 
ἀνθρώπου δὲ κρείττων ist (i. p. 683) ist nicht der neu-testamentliche, welcher 
vielmehr die ewige Wesenseinheit des Vaters und des Sohnes zur Vorausset- 
zung hat (Phil. ii. 6; Kol. i. 15 f.), und die Unterordnung des letztern in 
dessen Abhingigkeit vom Vater setzt.’ 

© Cf. Delitzsch, System der Biblischen Psychologie, p. 138. 


Υ] 


vd, 


230 The Divine Nature, how represented on St.Fohn. 


mentions two phases or stages; the first creation, the second 
revelation. The Word unveils Himself to the soul through the 
mediation of objects of sense in the physical world, and He also 
unveils Himself immediately. Accordingly St. John says that 
‘all things were made’ by the Word, and that the Word Who 
creates is also the Revealer: ‘the Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.’ He possesses δόξα, 
that is, in St. John, the totality of the Divine attributes. This 
‘glory’ is not merely something belonging to His Essential 
Nature ; since He allows us to behold It through His veil of 
Flesh. , 

What indeed this δόξα or glory was, we may observe by con- 


. sidering that St. John’s writings appear to bring God before us, 


at least more particularly, under a threefold aspect. 

1. God is Life (ζωὴ). The Father is ‘livingf;’ He ‘has life 
in Himselfg.’ God is not merely the living God, that is, the 
real God, in contrast to the non-existent and feigned deities of 
the heathen: God is Life, in the sense of Self-existent Being ; 
He is the Focus and the Fountain of universal life. In Him 
life may be contemplated in its twofold activity, as issuing from 
its source, and as returning to its object. The Life of God 
passes forth from Itself; It lavishes Itself throughout the realms — 
of nothingness ; It summons into being worlds, systems, intelli- 
gences, orders of existences unimagined before. In doing this 
It obeys no necessary law of self-expansion, but pours Itself 
forth with that highest generosity that belongs to a perfect 
freedom. That is to say, that God the Life is God the Creator. 
On the other hand, God is Being returning into Itself, finding 
in Itself Its perfect and consummate satisfaction. God is thus 
the Object of all dependent life; He is indeed the Object of His 
own Life; all His infinite powers and faculties turn ever inward 
with uncloyed delight upon Himself as upon their one adequate 
End or Object, We cannot approach more nearly to a definition 
of pleasure than by saying that it is the exact correspondence 
between a faculty and its object. Pleasure is thus a test of 


᾿ vitality; and God, as being Life, is the one Being Who is 


supremely and perfectly happy. 
2. Again, God is Love (ἀγάπη) Β, Love is the relation which 


f St. John vi. 57: ἀπέστειλέ we 6 ζῶν Πατήρ. 

g Ibid. v. 26: 6 Πατὴρ ἔχει ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ. - 

Βχ St. John iv. 8: 6 μὴ ἀγαπῶν, οὐκ ἔγνω τὸν Θεόν ὅτι ὃ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν. 
Ibid. ver. 16: 6 Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστὶ, καὶ 6 μένων ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ, ἐν τῷ Θεῷ μένει, 
καὶ ὅ Θεὸς ἐν αὐτῷ. 

[ Lect. 


/ 


Relation between God and the Incarnate Word. 231 


subsists between God and all that lives as He has willed. Love 
is the bond of the Being of God. Love binds the Father to that 
Only Son Whom He has begotten from all eternityi. Love 
itself knows no beginning; it proceeds from the Father and 
the Son from all eternity. God loves created life, whether in 
nature or in grace; He loves the race of men, the unredeemed 
world‘; He loves Christians with a special love!. In beings thus 
external to Himself, God loves the life which He has given them ; 
He loves Himself in them; He is still Himself the ultimate, 
rightful, necessary Object of His love. Thus love is of His 
essence; it is the expression of His necessary delight in His 
own existence. 

3. Lastly, God is Light (φῶς). That is to say, He is absolute 
intellectual and moral Truth; He is Truth in the realms of 
thought, and Truth in the sphere of action. He is the All- 
knowing and the perfectly Holy Being. No intellectual igno- 
rance can darken His all-embracing survey of actual and possible 
fact ; no stain can soil His robe of awful Sanctity. Light is not 
merely the sphere in which He dwells: He is His own sphere 
of existence ; He is Himself Light, and in Him is no darkness 
at all ™, 

These three aspects of the Divine Nature, denoted by the 
terms Life, Love, and Light, are attributed in St. John’s writings 
with abundant explicitness to the Word made flesh. 

Thus, the Logos is Light. He is the Light, that is, the Light 
Which is the very essence of God. The Baptist indeed preaches 
truth ; but the Baptist must not be confounded with the Light 
Which he heralds". The Logos is the true Light®, All that 


i St. John iii. 35: 6 Πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Ὑἱὸν καὶ πάντα δέδωκεν ἐν τῇ χειρὶ 
αὐτοῦ. Ibid. v. 20: 6 γὰρ Πατὴρ φιλεῖ τὸν Ὑἱὸν, καὶ πάντα δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ ἃ 
ἫΝ moet, Ibid. x. 17, xv. 9. Ibid. xvii. 24: ἠγάπησάς με πρὸ καταβολῆς 
κόσμου. 

κ St. John ili. 16: οὕτω yap ἠγάπησεν 6 Θεὺς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν Ὑἱὸν 
αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν. τ St. John iv. 10: αὐτὸς ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς, καὶ 
ἀπέστειλε τὸν Ὑἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἱλασμὸν “περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν. Ibid. ver. 19: 
ἡμεῖς ἀγαπῶμεν αὐτὸν, ὅτι αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς. 

1$t. John xiv. 23, xvi. 27. 

my St. John. i. §: 6 Θεὸς φῶς ἐστι, καὶ σκοτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδεμία. 
Ibid. ver. 7: αὐτός ἐστιν ἐν τῷ φωτί. Here ἐν does not merely point to the 
sphere in which God dwells. In St. John this preposition is constantly used 
to denote the closest possible relationship between two subjects, or, as here, 
between a subject and its attribute. Cf. Reuss, Théologie Chrétienne, ii. 
Ρ. 434, for this as well as many of the above observations and references. 

Ὁ δύ, Johni. 7: οὗτος ἦλθεν eis μαρτυρίαν, ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός. 
Ibid. ver. 8: οὐκ ἦν ἐκεῖνος τὸ φῶς, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ φωτός. 

° Ibid. ver. ο : ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν. 
νυ 


232 Gop revealed by the Word 7 ncarnate, 


has really enlarged the stock of intellectual truth or of moral 
goodness among men, all that has ever lighted any soul of man, 
has radiated from HimP. He proclaims Himself to be the Light 
of the world4, and the Truth"; and His Apostle, speaking of 
the illumination shed by Him upon the Church, reminds Chris- 
tians that ‘the darkness is passing, and the true Light now 
shineth 8.’ 

The Logos is Love. He refracts upon the Father the fulness 
of His lovet. He loves the Father as the Father loves Himself. 
The Father’s love sends Him into the world, and He obeys out 
of love¥. It is love which draws Him together with the Father 
to make His abode in the souls of the faithful *. | 

The Logos is Life. He is the Lifey, the eternal Life 4, the 
Life Which is the Essence of God. It has been given Him to 
have life in Himself, as the Father has life in Himself#, He 
can give life; nay, life is so emphatically His prerogative gift, 
that He is called the Word of 1189, : 

Thus the Word reveals the Divine Essence ; His Incarnation 
makes that Life, that Love, that Light, which is eternally resident 
in God, obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. 
These terms, Life, Love, Light—so abstract, so aise. SO aah 


P St. John i. 9: ὃ φωτίζει πάντα Dine: Poe biaiot, eis τὸν fe a ‘Das 
φωτίζειν πάντα δ als charakteristische Wirksamkeit des wahren Lichts, 
bleibt wahr, wenngleich empirisch diese Erleuchtung von Vielen nicht emp- 
fangen wird. Das empirische Verhialtniss kommt darauf zuriick: quisquis illu- 
minatur, ab hac luce illuminatur. (Beng.).’ Meyer in Joh. i. 9. The Evan- 
gelist means more than this: no human being is left without a certain mea- 
sure of natural light, and this light is given by the Divine Logos in all cases. 

ᾳ Ibid. viii. 12: ἐγώ εἶμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου" 6 ἀκολουθῶν ἐμοὶ, ov μὴ περι- 
πατήσει ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ, ἀλλ᾽ ἕξει τὸ φῶς τῆς ζωῆς. Ibid. iii. 19: τὸ φῶς 
ἐλήλυθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον, that is, in the Incarnate Word. Ibid. ix, 53 ὅταν ἐν 
τῷ κόσμῳ ὦ, φῶς εἶμι τοῦ κόσμου. Ibid. xii. 46: ἐγὼ φῶς εἰς τὸν κόσμον 
ἐλήλυθα, ἵνα πᾶς ὃ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ, ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ μὴ μείνῃ. 

r Ibid. xiv. 6. 

Β1 St. John ii. 8: 4 σκοτία παράγεται, καὶ τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ἤδη φαίνει. 

t St. John xiv. 31. 

ur St. J ohn i iii. 16: év τούτῳ ἐγνώκαμεν τὴν ἀγάπην (the absolute charity), 
ὅτι ἐκεῖνος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἔθηκε. Cf. St. John iii. 16. 

«St. J ohn xiv. 23: ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ με, τὸν λόγον μου τηρήσει, καὶ ὃ Πατήρ 
μου ἀγαπήσει αὐτόν, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλευσόμεθα, καὶ μονὴν παρ᾽ αὐτῷ ποιήσομεν. 
Ibid. xiii. 1, xv. 9. 

y Ibid. xi. 25: ἐγώ εἶμι... 7 ζωή. Ibid. xiv. 6. 

z1 St.John v. 20: οὗτός éotw...% ζωὴ αἰώνιος. The οὗτος is referred 
to the Father by Liicke and Winer. But see p. 239, note *. 

a St. John νυ. 26: ἔδωκε καὶ τῷ Tig ζωὴν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ. 

Ὁ ΤΌΪΑ. i. 3, 4 ; 

οι St. John i. 1: 6 λόγος τῆς ζωῆς. Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. p. 445. 

[ LECT. - 


—e. es, 


The Word ts the Only-begotten Son. 233 


gestive—meet in God; but they meet also in Jesus Christ. 
They do not only make Him the centre of a philosophy. They 
belong to the mystic language of faith more truly than to the 
abstract terminology of speculative thought. They draw hearts 
to Jesus ; they invest Him with a higher than any intellectual 
beauty. The Life, the Love, the Light, are the ‘glory’ of the 
Word Incarnate which His disciples ‘beheld,’ pouring its rays 
through the veil of His human tabernacled. The Light, the 
Love, the Life, constitute the ‘fulness’ whereof His disciples 
received®. Herein is comprised that entire body of grace and 
truth £, by which the Word Incarnate gives to men the right to 
become the sons of God &. 

But, as has been already abundantly implied, the Word is also 
the Son. As applied to our Lord, the title ‘Son of God’ is 
protected by epithets which sustain and define its unique sig- 
nificance. In the synoptic Gospels, Christ is termed the 
‘well-beloved’ Son». In St. Paul He is God’s ‘Own’ Soni.. 
In St. John He is the Only-begotten Son, or simply the Only- 
begotten k, This last epithet surely means, not merely that God 
has no other such Son, but that His Only-begotten Son is, in 
virtue of this Sonship, a partaker of that incommunicable and 
imperishable Essence, Which is sundered from all created life by 
an impassable chasm. If St. Paul speaks of the Resurrection as 


4§t. Johni.14: 6 Adyos σὰρξ ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα 
τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ. 

6 Ibid. ver..16: καὶ ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν. 

f Ibid. ver. 14: πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας. 

Ibid. i. 12: ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτὸν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα Θεοῦ 
γενέσθαι. 

h ἀγαπητός, St. Matt. iii. 17, xii. 18, xvii. 5; St. Mark i. 11, ix. 7, xii. 6; 
St. Luke iii. 22, ix. 35. Cod. Alex. reads ἐκλελεγμένον, xx. 133 cf. 
2 St. Peter i. £7. 

i Rom. viii. 32: τοῦ ἰδίου Ὑἱοῦ οὐκ ἐφείσατο. Ibid. ver. 3: τὸν ἑαυτοῦ Tidy 
πέμψας. 

k St. John i. 14: ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ 
Πατρός. Ibid. i. 18: 6 μονογενὴς Ὑἱὸς, ὃ dv εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ Πατρός. Ibid. 
iii. 16: [6 Θεὸς] τὸν Ὑἱὸν αὑτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν. Ibid. ver. 18: 6 δὲ μὴ 
πιστεύων ἤδη κέκριται, ὅτι μὴ πεπίστευκεν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ μονογενοῦς Ὑἱοῦ 
τοῦ Θεοῦ. Οὗ τ St. John iv.g: τὸν Ὑἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἀπέσταλκεν 6 
Θεὸς εἰς τὸν κόσμον, ἵνα ζήσωμεν δὲ αὐτοῦ. The word μονογενής is used by 
St. Luke of the son of the widow of Nain (vii. 12), of the daughter of Jairus 
(viii. 42), and of the lunatic son of the man who met our Lord on His coming 
down from the mount of the 'transfiguration (ix. 38). In Heb. xi. 17 it is 
applied to Isaac. μονογενής means in each of these cases ‘that which exists 
once only, that is, singly in its kind.’ (Tholuck, Comm. in Joh. i. 14.) God 
has one Only Son Who by nature and necessity is His Son. 


v] 


234 ‘Word’ and ‘Son’ complete and guard each other. 


manifesting this Sonship to the world!, the sense of the word 
μονογενής remains in St. John, and it is plainly ‘defined by its 
context to relate to something higher than any event occurring 


in time, however great or beneficial to the human race™,” The | 


Only-begotten Son” is in the bosom of the Father (ὁ dp εἰς τὸν 
κόλπον͵ Tod Πατρός) just as the Logos is πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, ever con- 
templating, ever, as it were, moving towards Him in the ceaseless 
activities of an ineffable communion. The Son is His Father’s 
equal, in that He is partaker of His nature: He is His Subordi- 
nate, in that this Equality is eternally derived. But the Father 
worketh hitherto and the Son works; the Father hath life in 
Himself, and has given to the Son to have life in Himself ; all 
men are to honour the Son even as they honour the Father ®, 
Each of these expressions, the Word and the Son, if taken 
alone, might have led to a fatal misconception. In the language 
of Church history, the Logos, if unbalanced by the idea of Sonship, 
might have seemed to sanction Sabellianism. The Son, without 
the Logos, might have been yet more successfully pressed into 
the service of Arianism. An Eternal Thought or Reason, even 
although constantly tending to express itself in speech, is of itself 
too abstract to oblige us to conceive of it as of a personal Sub- 
sistence. On the other hand the filial relationship carries with 
it the idea of dependence and of comparatively recent origin, 
even although it should suggest the reproduction in the Son of 
all the qualities of the Father. Certainly St. John’s language in 
his prologue protects the Personality of the Logos, and unless 
he believed that God could be divided or could have had a 
beginning, the Apostle teaches that the Son is co-eternal with 
the Father. Yet the bare metaphors of ‘Word’ and ‘Son,’ taken 
separately, might lead divergent thinkers to conceive of Him to 
Whom they are applied, on the one side as an impersonal quality 
or faculty of God, on the other, as a concrete and personal but in- 
ferior and dependent being. But combine them, and each corrects 
the possible misuse of the other. The Logos, Who is also the 
Son, cannot be an impersonal and abstract quality ; since such 
an expression as the Son would be utterly misleading, unless it 
implied at the very least the fact of a personal subsistence dis- 
tinct from that of the Father. On the other hand, the Son, Who 


1 Acts xiii. 32, 33; Rom. i: 4. Compare on the other hand, Heb. v. 8. 

m Newman’s Arians, p. 174. 

π St. Johni. 18, 6 μονογενὴς Tids, where however the Vatican and Sinaitic 
MSS. and Cod. Ephr. read 6 μονογενὴξ ΘΕΟΣ. For the Patristic evidence 
on the subject, see Alford in loc. ο St. John. v. 17, 23, 26 

| [ LECT. 


ΝΣ Δ I 


Manifestation of the Word in history. 2535 


is also the Logos, cannot be of more recent origin than the 
Father ; since the Father cannot be conceived of as subsisting 
without that Eternal Thought or Reason Which is the Son. Nor 
may the Son be deemed to be in any respect, save in the order of 
Divine subsistence, inferior to the Father, since He is identical 
with the eternal intellectual Life of the Most High. Thus each 
metaphor reinforces, supplements, and protects the other. Taken 
together they exhibit Christ before His Incarnation as at once 
personally distinct from, and yet equal with, the Father; He is 
That personally subsisting and ‘Eternal Life, Which was with 
the Father, and was manifested unto us P.’ 

St. John’s Gospel is a narrative of that manifestation. It 
is a Life of the Eternal Word tabernacling in Human Nature 
among men4% The Hebrew schools employed a similiar ex- 
pression to designate the personal presence of the Divinity 
in this finite world. In St. John’s Gospel the Personality of 


Christ makes Itself felt as Eternal and Divine at wellnigh every 


step of the narrative'. Each discourse, each miracle, nay, each 
separate word and act, 15. a fresh ray of glory streaming forth 
from the Person of the Word through the veil of His assumed 
Humanity. The miracles of the Word Incarnate are frequently 
called His works’. The Evangelist means to imply that ‘the 
wonderful is only the natural form of working for Him in Whom 
all the fulness of God dwells.’ Christ’s Divine Nature must 


P St. John i. 2. Cf. Newman’s Arians, ch. ii. sect. τὸ 
a δύ, John i. 14: ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. The image implies both the reality 
and the transient character of our Lord’s manifestation in the flesh. Ols- 


’ hausen, Meyer, and Liicke see in it an allusion to the ‘Shekinah,’ in which 


the Divine glory or radiance (129) dwelt enshrined. 

τ Baur, Dogmengeschichte, i. 602: ‘Was das johanneische Evangelium 
betrifft, so versteht es sich ohnediess von selbst, dass das eigentliche Subject 
der Persénlichkeit Christi nur der Logos ist, die Menschwerdung besteht 
daher nur in dem σὰρξ γενέσθαι; dass der Logos Fleisch geworden, im 
Fleisch erschienen ist, ist seine menschliche Erscheinung.’ It will be borne 
in mind that σάρξ, in its full New Testament meaning, certainly includes 
ψυχή as well as the animal organism (see Olshausen on Rom. vii. 14), 
and St. John attributes to the Word Incarnate spiritual experiences which 
must have had their seat in His human Soul (xi. 33, 38, xiii. 21). But 
Baur’s general position, that in St. John’s Gospel the Personality of the 
Eternal Word is perpetually before us, is unquestionably true. 

5 ἔργα, St. John v. 36, vii. 21, xX. 25, 32, 38, xiv. II, 12, xv. 23. 
Cf. too St. Matt. xi. 2. The word is applied to the Old Testament miracles 
in Heb. iii.g; Ps. xciv.9, LXX. Cf. Archbishop Trench on the Miracles, 
Ρ- 7. That, notwithstanding the wider use of ἔργον in St. John xvii. 4, 
épya in the ΓΈΡΟΝ Gospel do mean Christ’s miracles, cf. Trench, Mir. p- 8, 
note +. 


v4) 


236 Manifestation of the Word in history. 


of necessity bring forth works greater than the works of man. 
The Incarnation is the one great wonder; other miracles follow 
as a matter of course. The real marvel would be if the In- 
earnate Being should work no miraclest; as it is, they are 
the natural results of His presence among men, rather than 
its higher manifestation. His true glory is not perceived except 
by those who gaze at it with a meditative and reverent intent- 
ness". The Word Incarnate is ever conscious of His sublime 
relationship to the Father. He knows whence He is*%. He 
refers not unfrequently to His pre-existent Lifey. He sees 
into the deepest purposes of the human hearts around Him 2. 
He has a perfect knowledge of all that concerns God® His 
works are simply the works of God». To believe in the Father 
is to believe in Him. To have seen Him is to have seen the 
Father. To reject and hate Him is to reject and hate the 
Father. He demands at the hands of men the same tribute 
of affection and submission as that which they owe to the 
Person of the Father. 


t Trench, ubi supra, p. 8. 

« St. John uses the words θεωρεῖν, θεάσασθαι to describe this. 

x St. John viii. 14: οἷδα πόθεν ἦλθον. 

Υ St. John iii. 13, vi. 62, viii. 58, xvi. 28, xvii. 5. 

2 Ibid. ii. 24, iv. 17, v. 14, 42, Vi. 15. ἃ bid. vill. 55, X. 15. 

b Ibid. ix. 4, X. 37, Sqq., Xiv. 10. 

© As M. Reuss admits: ‘Il résulte (from the prerogatives ascribed to the 
Word Incarnate in St. John’s Gospel) que le Verbe révélateur pouvait 
demander pour lui-méme, de la part des hommes, les mémes sentiments, 
et les mémes dispositions, qu’ils doivent avoir ἃ l’égard de la personne du 
Pére. Ces sentiments sont exprimés par un mot, qui contient la notion 
d’un respect professé pour un supérieur, la reconnaissance d’une dignité 
devant laquelle on s’incline. A cet égard, il y a égalité des deux personnes 
divines vis-a-vis de Vhomme. On ne croit pas ἃ lune sans croire ἃ l’autre; 
qui voit l’une voit l’autre ; rejeter, hair le Fils, c’est rejeter et hair le Pére. 
(St. Jean iii. 33, 34, xii. 44, xv. 23). Mais dans tout ceci (proceeds 
M. Reuss) il ne s’agit pas de ce qu’on appele le culte dans le langage pra- 
tique de l’Eglise. Le culte appartient ἃ Dieu le Pére, et lui sera offert 
désormais avec d’autant plus d’empressement qu'il est mieux révélé, et que 
rien ne sépare plus de lui les croyants.’ (Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 455.) How 
inconsequent is this restriction! If the Incarnate Word has a right to 
demand for Himself the same ‘sentiments’ and ‘ dispositions’ as those which 
men cherish towards the Almighty Father, He has a right to the same 
tribute of an adoration in spirit and in truth as that which is due to the 
Father. What is worship but a complex act of such ‘sentiments’ and 
‘dispositions’ as faith, love, self-prostration, self-surrender before the Most 
Holy ? If τιμᾶν (St. John v. 23), within the general meaning of due acknow- 
ledgment, includes much else besides adoration, it cannot be applied to the 
duties of man to God without including adoration. Our Lord’s words place 
Himself and the Father simply on a level; if the Son is not to be προ 

LECT.. 


This explains St. Fohn’s point of view. 237 


In St. John’s Gospel, the Incarnation is exhibited, not as 
the measure of the humiliation of the Eternal Word, but as 
the veil of His enduring and unassailable glory. The angels of 
God ascend and descend upon Him. Nay, He is still in heaven. 
Certainly He has taken an earthly form; He has clothed himself 
with a human frame. But He has thereby raised humanity rather 
than abased Himself. In St. John the status inanitionis, the 
intrinsic humiliation of Christ’s Incarnate Life, is thrown into the 
background of the reader’s thought. The narrative is throughout 
illuminated by the never-failing presence of the Word in His 
glory4. Even when Jesus dies, His Death is no mere humilia- 
tion ; His Death is the crisis of His exaltation 8, of His glory 
Not that He can personally increase in glory. - He is already 
the Son’; He is the Word. But He can glorify and exalt that 
Manhood which is the robe through which His movements are 
discernible: He can glorify Himself, as God is glorified, by 
drawing towards His Person the faith and love and reverence 
of men. It were folly to conceive of Him as enhancing His 
Divinity ; but He can make larger and deeper that measure 
of homage which ascends towards His throne from human 
understandings and from human hearts 8, | 

III. τ. But does St. John’s teaching in his earlier writings on 
the subject of our Lord’s Person harmonize with the representa- 


neither is the Father; if the Father is to be adored, then must the Son 
be adored in the same sense and measure. This is certainly not interfered 
with by St. John iv. 20, sqq.; while the best practical comment upon it 
is to be found in the confession of St. Thomas, xx. 28; on which see 
Lect. VII. 

ἃ This may seem inconsistent with (1) St. John xiv. 28: 6 Πατὴρ μείζων 
μου ἐστίν. But such a statement would be ‘unmeaning’ in a mere man. 
See Lect. 1V. pp. 199-201 ; (2) St. John xvii. 3: αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος 
(an, ἵνα γινώσκωσίν σε τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν Θεὸν, καὶ dv ἀπέστειλας ᾿Ιησοῦν 
Χριστόν. But here ἃ Socinian sense is excluded, (1) by the consideration 
that ‘the knowledge of Gop and a creature could not be Eternal Life’ 
(see Alford in loc.); (2) by the plain sense of verse 1, which places the 
Son and the Father on a level: ‘ What creature could stand before his Creator 
and say, ‘Glorify me, that I may glorify thee?’ Stier apud Alf.; (3) by 
verse 5, which asserts our Lord’s pre-existent δόξα. It follows that the 
restrictive epithets μόνον ἀληθινόν must be held to be exclusive, not of the 
Son, but of false gods, or creatures external to the Divine Essence. See 
Estius in loc. 

ὁ St. John 111. 14: ὑψωθῆναι δεῖ τὸν Ὑἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Ibid viii. 28, 
xii. 32. 

f Ibid. xii. 23: ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ὥρα ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ Vids τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. 
Ibid. xiii. 31. 

5. Cf. Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 456; although the statements of this writer 
cannot be adopted without much qualification. 

Υ] 


238 Christology of St. Fohn’s First Epistle. 


tions placed before us in the fourth Gospel? The opening 
words of his first Epistle might go far to answer that question. 
St. John’s position in this Epistle is, that the Eternal immaterial 
Word of Life resident in God had become historically manifest, 
and that the Apostles had consciously seen, and heard, and 
handled Him, and were now publishing their experience to the 
world!, The practical bearing of this announcement lay in the 
truth that ‘he that hath the Son hath the Life, and he that hath 
not the Son hath not the Lifei” For ‘God hath given to us the 
Eternal Life, and this, the Life, is in His Sonk.’ If then the 
soul is to hold communion with God in the Life of Light and 
Righteousness and Love, it must be through communion with 
His Divine Son. Thus all practically depends upon the attitude 
of the soul towards the Son. Accordingly, ‘whosoever denieth 
the Son, the same hath not the Father!;’ while on the other 
hand, whosoever sincerely and in practice acknowledges the. Son 
of God in His historical manifestation, enjoys a true communion 
with the Life of God. ‘Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is 
the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God™,’ | 

St. John constantly teaches that the Christian’s work in this 
state of probation is to conquer ‘the world», It is, in other 


h On the question of the authorship of the three Epistles, see Dean Al- 
ford’s exhaustive discussion, Greek Test. vol. iv., Prolegomena, chaps. 5, 6. 
See too Appendix, note E. i 1 St. John 1. 1-3. 

i Ibid. v. 12: ὁ ἔχων τὸν Tidy ἔχει τὴν ζωὴν" ὃ μὴ ἔχων τὸν Tidv τοῦ Θεοῦ 
τὴν ζωὴν οὐκ ἔχει. 

k ΤΌΙΑ. νοῦ. τι : καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἣ μαρτυρία (i.e. the revealed doctrine resting 
on a Divine authority) ὅτι ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν ὃ Θεὸς, καὶ αὕτη ἡ Cw ἐν 
τῷ Tis αὐτοῦ ἐστιν. 

! Ibid. ii. 22: οὗτός ἐστιν ὃ ἀντίχριστος, ὃ ἀρνούμενος τὸν Πατέρα καὶ τὸν 
Ὑἱόν. A Humanitarian might have urged that it was possible to deny the 
Son, while confessing the Father. But St. John, on the ground that the Son 
is the Only and the Adequate Manifestation of the Father, denies this: πᾶς 
ὃ ἀρνούμενος Tov Tidy οὐδὲ τὸν Πατέρα ἔχει. 

m [bid. iv. 15 : ὃς ἂν ὁμολογήσῃ ὅτι Ingots ἐστιν 6 Ὑἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὁ Θεὸς ἐν 
αὐτῷ μένει, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν τῷ Θεῷ. 

π [bid. ii. 15: ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ τὸν κόσμον, οὐκ ἔστιν ἣ ἀγάπη τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐν 
αὐτῷ. Compare Martensen, Christl. Dogmat. § 96: ‘If we consider the 
effects of the Fall upon the course of historical development, not only in the 
case of individuals but of the race collectively, the term “world” (κόσμος) 
bears a special meaning different from that which it would have, were the de- 
velopment of humanity normal. The cosmical principle having been emanci- 
pated by the Fall from its due subjection to the Spirit, and invested with a 
false independence, and the universe of creation having obtained with man 
a higher importance than really attaches to it, the historical development of 
the world has become one in which the advance of the kingdom of God is 
retarded and hindered. The created universe has, in a relative sense, life in 

[ LECT. 


Christology of St. Ffohu's First Epistle. 239 


words, to fight successfully against that view of life which 
ignores God, against that complex system of attractive moral 
evil and specious intellectual falsehood, which is marshalled and 
organized by the great enemy of God, and which permeates and 
inspires non-Christianized society. The world’s force is seen 
especially in ‘the lust of the flesh, in the lust of the eyes, and in 
the pride of life.’ These three forms of concupiscence manifest 
the inner life of the world®; if the Christian would resist and 
beat them back, he must have a strong faith, a faith in a Divine 
Saviour. ‘Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that 
believeth that Jesus is the Son of GodP?’ This faith, which 
introduces the soul to communion with God in Light, attained 
through communion with His Blessed Son, exhibits the world 
in its true colours. The soul spurns the world as she clings 
believingly to the Divine Son. 

St. John’s picture of Christ’s work in this first Epistle, and 
especially his pointed and earnest opposition to the specific 
heresy of Cerinthus4, leads us up to the culminating statement 
that Jesus Himself is the true God and the Eternal Lifer. 


itself, including, as it does, a system of powers, ideas, and aims, which 
possess ὦ relative value. This relative independence, which ought to be sub- 
servient to the kingdom of God, has become a fallen *‘ world-autonomy.” Hence 
arises the scriptural expression ‘‘ this world” (ὁ κόσμος otros). By this ex- 
pression the Bible conveys the idea that it regards the world not only 
ontologically but in its definite and actual state, the state in which it has 
been since the Fall. “* This world” means the world content with itself, in its 
own independence, its own glory; the world which disowns its dependence 
on God as its Creator. “ This world” regards itself, not as the κτίσις, but only 
as the κόσμος, as a system of glory and beauty which has life in itself, and 
can give life. The historical embodiment of “this world” is heathendom, 
which honoureth not God as God.’ 

οι St. John ii. 16: πᾶν τὸ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, H ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς, Kal 7 
ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν, καὶ ἣ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου, οὐκ ἔστιν ἐϊς τοῦ Πατρὸς, 
ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου ἐστί. 

P Ibid. v. 4, 5: αὕτη ἐστὶν 7, 7 νίκη ἡ νικήσασα τὸν κόσμον, ἣ πίστις ἡμῶν" 
τίς ἐστιν 6 νικῶν τὸν κόσμον, εἰ μὴ ὁ πιστεύων ὅτι ᾿Ιησοῦς ἐστιν 6 Ὑἱὸς τοῦ 
Θεοῦ ; 

4 Specially St. John iv. 2, 3, where the Apostle’ s words contain a double 
antithesis to the Cerinthian gnosis, which taught that the Aton Christ entered 
into the Man Jesus at His baptism, and remained with Him until His 
Passion, Jesus being a mere man. St. John asserts in opposition (1) that 
Jesus and the Christ are one and the same Person, (2) that the one Lord 
Jesus Christ came ‘in’ not ‘into the flesh,’ He did not descend into an 
already existing man, but He appeared clothed in Human Nature. See the 
exhaustive note of Ebrard, Die Briefe Johannis, in loc. 

r 1 St. John v. 20: ΕΔΗ ΒΝ ἐστιν 6 ἀληθινὸς Θεὸς, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ αἰώνιος. After 
having distinguished the ἀληθινός from His Υἱός, St. John, by a characteristic 


Υ] 


240 Characteristic temper of St. ¥ohn. 


Throughout this Epistle the Apostle has been writing to those 
‘who believe on the Name of the Son of God,’ that is to say, on 
the Divine Nature of Jesus which the verbal symbol guards and 
suggests. Throughout this Epistle St. John’s object has been 
to convince believers that by that faith they had the Eternal 
Life, and to force them to be true to Its, 

In each of St. John’s Epistlest we encounter that special 
temper, at once so tender and so peremptory, which is an ethical 
corollary to belief in an Incarnate God. St. John has been 
named the Apostle of the Absolute. Those who would concede 
to Christianity no higher dignity than that of teaching a relative 
and provisional truth, will fail to find any countenance for their 
doctrine in the New Testament Scriptures. But nowhere will 
they meet with a more earnest opposition to it than in the 
pages of the writer who is pre-eminently the Apostle of charity. 
St. John preaches the Christian creed as the one absolute cer- 
tainty. The Christian faith might have been only relatively 
true, if it had reposed upon the word of a human messenger. 
But St.John specially insists upon the fact that God has re- 
vealed Himself, not merely through, but in, Christ. The Abso- 
lute Religion is introduced by a Self-revelation of the Absolute 


turn, simply identifies the Son with the ἀληθινὸς Θεός. To refer this sentence 
to the Father, Who has been twice called 6 ἀληθινός, would be unmeaning 
repetition. Moreover the previous sentence declared, not that we are in God 
as Father, Son and Spirit, but that we are in God as being in His Son Jesus 
Christ. This statement is justified when οὗτος is referred to Tig. As to the 
article before ἀληθινός, it has the effect of stating, not merely What, but Who 
our Lord is ; it says not, Christ is Divine, but, Christ is God. This does not 
really go beyond what the Apostle has already said about the Adyos at the 
beginning of this Epistle. To object with Diisterdieck that this interpreta- 
tion obscures the distinction between the Father and the Son, is inaccurate ; 
St. John does not say, This is the Father, but, This is the true God. Ὁ ἀλη- 
θινὸς Θεός is the Divine Essence, in opposition to all creatures. The question 
of hypostatic distinctions within that Essence is not here before the Apostle. 
Our being in the true God depends upon our being in Christ, and St. John 
clenches this assertion by saying that Christ is the true God Himself. See 
St. Ath. Or. c. Ar. iv. 26; St. Cyril. Thes. p. 302; Waterland, Works, il. 130. 

51 St. John v. 13: ταῦτα ἔγραψα ὑμῖν [rots πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄ ὄνομα τοῦ 
Ὑἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, Rec.} ἵνα εἰδῆτε ὃ ὅτι ζωὴν ἔ ἔχετε αἰώνιον, καὶ ἵνα πιστεύητε [οἷ 
πιστεύοντες, Tisch. 7 εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Tiod τοῦ Θεοῦ. 

ὁ In St. John’s second Epistle observe (1 1) the association of Christ with the 
Father as the source of χάρις, ἔλεος, and εἰρήνη (ver. 3); (2) the denunciation 
of the Cerinthian doctrine as anti-Christian (ver. 7); (3) the significant state- 
ment that a false progress (6 προάγων, A.B., not as rec. 6 rapaBalvor) which 
did not rest in the true Apostolic διδαχὴ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, would forfeit all com- 
munion with God. We know Him only in Christ His Blessed Son, and to 
reject Christianity is to reject the only true Theism (vers. 8, 9). 

| [ LECT. 


— στο. aie eae 


Union of tenderness with decision tn St. Fohn. 241 


Being Himself. God has appeared, God has spoken ; and the 
Christian faith is the result. St. John then does not treat 
Christianity as a phase in the history even of true religion, nor 
as a religion containing elements of truth, even though it were 
more true than any religion which had preceded it. St. John 
proclaims that ‘we “ Christians” are in Him that is True.’ Not 
to admit that Jesus Christ has come in the Flesh, is to be a de- 
ceiver and an antichrist. St. John presents Christianity to the 
soul as a religion which must be its all, if it is not really to be 
worse than nothing". The opposition between truth and error, 
between the friends and the foes of Christ, is for St. John as 
sharp and trenchant a thing as the contrast between light and 
darkness, between life and death*. This is the temper of a man 
who will not enter the public baths along with the heretic who 
has dishonoured his Lordy, This is the spirit of the teacher 
who warns his flock to beware of eating with a propagator of 
false doctrine, and of bidding him God speed, lest they should 
partake of his ‘evil deeds%.’ Yet this is also the writer whose 
pages, beyond any other in the New Testament, beam with the 
purest, tenderest love of humanity. Side by side with this 
resolute antagonism to dogmatic error, St. John exhibits and 
inculeates an enthusiastic affection for humankind as such, which 
our professed philanthropists could not rival@. The man who 
loves not his brother man, whatever be his spiritual estimate of 
himself, abideth in death>. No divorce is practically possible 
between the first and the second parts of charity: the man who 


u 1 St. John ii. 21: οὐκ ἔγραψα ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐκ οἴδατε Thy ἀλήθειαν, GAN ὅτι 
οἴδωτε αὐτὴν, καὶ ὅτι πᾶν ψεῦδος ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας οὐκ ἔστι. Ibid. v.10: 6 μὴ 
πιστεύων τῷ Θεῷ ψεύστην πεποίηκεν αὐτόν. 

x Ibid. ii. 15: ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ τὸν κόσμον οὐκ ἔστιν ἣ ἀγάπη τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐν 
αὐτῷ. Ibid. νον. το : ἐξ ἡμῶν ἐξῆλθον (scil. οἱ ἀντίχριστοι] ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἦσαν ἐξ 
ἡμῶν" εἰ γὰρ ἦσαν ἐξ ἡμῶν, μεμενήκεισαν ἂν μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ἀλλ᾽ va φανερωθῶσιν 
ὅτι οὐκ εἰσὶ πάντες ἐξ ἡμῶν. Ibid. ver. 22: οὗτός ἐστιν 6 ἀντίχριστος, 6 
ἀρνούμενος τὸν Πατέρα καὶ τὸν Ὑἱόν. 

Υ St. Irenzeus, adv. Heer. iii. 3, 4: καὶ εἰσὶν of ἀκηκοότες αὑτοῦ (τοῦ Πολυ- 
κάρπου) ὅτι ᾿Ιωάννης ὃ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθητὴς, ev τῇ ᾿Εφέσῳ πορευθεὶς λούσασθαι, 
καὶ ἰδὼν ἔσω Κήρινθον, ἐξήλατο τοῦ βαλανείου μὴ λουσάμενος ἄλλ᾽ ἐπειπὼν, 
“Φύγωμεν, μὴ καὶ τὸ βαλανεῖον συμπέσῃ, ἔνδον ὄντος Κηρίνθου, τοῦ τῆς 
ἀληθείας ἐχθροῦ. Cf. Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 28. 

2.2 Bt. John 10, τι: εἴ τις ἔρχεται πρὸς ὑμᾶς, καὶ ταύτην τὴν διδαχὴν οὐ 
φέρει, μὴ λαμβάνετε αὐτὸν εἰς οἰκίαν, καὶ χαίρειν αὐτῷ μὴ λέγετε" ὃ γὰρ λέγων 
αὐτῷ χαίρειν, κοινωνεῖ τοῖς ἔργοις αὐτοῦ τοῖς πονηροῖς. 

8 1 St. John iii. 11. Poet 

Ὁ Tbid. ver. 14: ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εν “ayy 
(why, ὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τοὺς ἀδελφούς᾽ 6 μὴ ἀγαπῶν Toy ἀδελφὸν μένε ey. Jf a 
θανάτῳ. 


v] R fea 4 4 
<a S ” 
\ ft a 


we 


242 St. Fohn’s temper a product of his doctrine. 


loves his God must love his brother alsoc. Love is the moral 
counterpart of intellectual light4. 

It is a modern fashion to represent these two tempers, the 
dogmatic and the philanthropic, as necessarily opposed. This 
representation indeed is not even in harmony with modern ex- 
perience ; but in St. John it meets with a most energetic con- 
tradiction. St. John is at once earnestly dogmatic and earnestly 
philanthropic ; for the Incarnation has taught him both the 
preciousness of man and the preciousness of truth. The Eternal 
Word, incarnate and dying for the truth, inspires St. John to 
guard it with apostolic chivalry ; but also, this revelation of the 
Heart of God melts him into tenderness towards the race which 
Jesus has loved so well®. To St. John a lack of love for men 
seems sheer dishonour to the love of Christ. And the heresy 
which mutilates the Person or denies the work of Christ, does 
not present itself to St. John as purely speculative misfortune, 
as clumsy negation of fact, as barren intellectual error. Heresy 
is with this Apostle a crime against charity ; not only because 
heresy breeds divisions among brethren, but yet more because it 
kills out from the souls of men that blessed and prolific Truth, 
which, when sincerely believed, cannot but fill the heart with 
love to God and to man. St. John writes as one whose eyes had 
looked upon and whose hands had handled the sensibly present 
form of Light and Love. That close’ contact with the Absolute 
Truth Incarnate had kindled in him a holy impatience of an- 
tagonist error ; that felt glow of the Infinite Charity of God had 
shed over his whole character and teaching the beauty and 
pathos of a tenderness, which, as our hearts tell us while we 
read his pages, is not of this world. 

2. This ethical reflection of the doctrine of God manifest in 
the flesh is perhaps mainly characteristic of St. John’s first 
Epistle ; but it is not wanting in the Apocalypse‘. The repre- 

¢ 1 St. Johniv. 20, 21: 6 μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ὃν ἑώρακε, τὸν Θεὸν 
ὃν οὐχ ἑώρακε πῶς δύναται ἀγαπᾶν ; καὶ ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔχομεν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, 
ἵνα ὃ ἀγαπῶν τὸν Θεὸν ἀγαπᾷ καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ. 

ἃ Thid. ii. 9, 10: ὅ λέγων ἐν τῷ φωτὶ εἶναι, καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ μισῶν, ἐν 
τῇ σκοτίᾳ ἐστὶν ἕως ἄρτι. ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ φωτὶ μένει. 

ε Ibid. iii. 16: ἐν τούτῳ ἐγνώκαμεν τὴν ἀγάπην (i.e. absolute charity), ὅτι 
ἐκεῖνος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἔθηκε" καὶ ἡμεῖς ὀφείλομεν ὑπὲρ τῶν 
ἀδελφῶν τὰς ψυχὰς τιθέναι. Ibid. iv. 9: ἐν τούτῳ ἐφανερώθη ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ 
Θεοῦ ἐν ἡμῖν, ὅτι τὸν Ὑἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἀπέσταλκεν ὃ Θεὸς εἰς τὸν 
κόσμον, ἵνα ζήσωμεν δι᾽ αὐτοῦ. 

f On the Johannean authorship of the’ Apocalypse, see Alford, Gk. Test. 
vol. iv. pp. 198-229; and Dr. Wait’s remarks in the pref. to Hug’s Intro- 


duction, pp. 145-177. 
LECT. 


Divinity of Fesus Christ in the Apocalypse. 243 


sentation of the Person of our Saviour in the Apocalypse is 
independent of any indistinctness that may attach to the in- 
terpretation of the historical imagery of that wonderful book. 
In the Apocalypse, Christ is the First and the Last; He is the 
Alpha and the Omega; He is the Beginning and the End of all 
existence®. He possesses the seven spirits or perfections of 
God, He has a mysterious Name which no man knows save 
He Himselfi. His Name is written on the foreheads of the 
faithfulk ; His grace is the blessing of Christians! In the 
Apocalypse, His Name is called the Word of God™; as in 
the first Epistle He is the Word of Life, and in the Gospel 
the Word in the beginning. As He rides through heaven on 
His errand of triumph and of judgment, a Name is written on 
His vesture and on His thigh; He is ‘ King of kings, and Lord 
of lords®.’ St. John had leaned upon His breast at supper in 
the familiarity of trusted friendship. St. John sees Him but for 
a moment in His supramundane glory, and forthwith falls at His 
feet as dead®. In the Apocalypse especially we are confronted 
with the startling truth that the true Lord of Heaven is none 
other than the Crucified One. The armies of heaven follow 
Him, clothed as He is in a vesture dipped in blood, the symbol 
and token of His Passion and of His VictoryP. But of all the 
teachings of the Apocalypse on this subject, perhaps none is so 
full of significance as the representation of Christ in His 
wounded Humanity upon the throne of the Most High. The 
Lamb, as It had been slain, is in the very centre of the court of 
heaven1 ; He receives the prostrate adoration of the highest 
intelligences around the throne™; and as the Object of that 
solemn, uninterrupted, awful worship’, He is associated with the 


& Rev. i. 8: ἐγώ εἶμι τὸ A καὶ τὸ O, ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὃ ἔσχατος. Cf. Ibid. 
ii. 8, xxi. 6, xxii. 13: ἀρχὴ καὶ τέλος. 

h Thbid. iii. 1: ὁ ἔ ἔχων τὰ ἑπτὰ πνεύματα τοῦ Θεοῦ. 

i Tbid. xix. 12: ἔχων ὄνομα γεγραμμένον ὃ οὐδεὶς οἶδεν εἰ μὴ αὐτός. 

k Jbid. iii. 12, cf. ii. 17. 

1 Ibid. xxii. 21. , 

m ΤΌϊ4. xix. 13: καλεῖται τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ὃ Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ. 

n Ibid. ver. 16: ἔχει ἐπὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν μηρὸν αὐτοῦ τὸ ὄνομα γε- 


; γραμμένον, Βασιλεὺς βασιλέων καὶ Κύριος κυρίων. Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 15. 


© Ibid. i. 17: ὅτε εἶδον αὐτὸν, ἔπεσα πρὸς τοῦς πόδας αὐτοῦ ὡς νεκρός. 

P Ibid. xix. 13, 14 

4 Ibid. v.6: ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ θρόνου... - ᾿Αρνίον ἑστηκὸς ἁ ὡς ἐσφαγμένον. 

Σ Ibid. v. 8: τὰ τέσσαρα ζῶα καὶ οἱ εἰκοσιτέσσαρες πρεσβύτεροι ἔπεσον 
ἐνώπιον τοῦ ᾿Αρνίου. 

5. Ibid. ver. 12: ἄξιόν ἐστι τὸ ᾿Αρνίον τὸ ἐσφαγμένον λαβεῖν τὴν δύναμιν καὶ 


᾿ πλοῦτον καὶ σοφίαν καὶ ἰσχὺν καὶ τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν καὶ εὐλογίαν. 
ΤΥ] Β 2 


244. Is the Divine Christ of St. Fohn 


Father, as being in truth one with the Almighty, Uncreated, 
Supreme Godt. 

IV. Considerable, then, as may have been the interval be- 
tween the composition of the Apocalypse and that of the fourth 
Gospel, we find in the two documents one and the same doe- 
trine, in substance if not in terms, respecting our Lord’s Eternal 
Person ; and further, this doctrine accurately corresponds with 
that of St. John’s first Epistle. But it may be asked whether 
St. John, thus consistent with himself upon a point of such 
capital importance, is really in harmony with the teaching of the 
earlier Evangelists? It is granted that between St. John and 
the three first Gospels there is a broad difference of characteristic 
phraseology, of the structure, scene, and matter of the several 
narratives. Does this difference strike deeper still? Is the 
Christology of the son of Zebedee fundamentally distinct from 


that of his predecessors? Can we recognise the Christ of the. 


earlier Evangelists in the Christ of St. John? 

Now it is obvious to remark that the difference between the 
three first Evangelists and the fourth, in their respective repre- 
sentations of the Person of our Lord, is in one sense, at any 
rate, a real difference. There is a real difference in the point of 
view of the writers, although the truth before them is one and 
the same. Each from his own stand-point, the first three Evan- 
gelists seek and pourtray separate aspects of the Human side of 
the Life of Jesus. They set forth His perfect Manhood in all Its 
regal grace and majesty, in all Its Human sympathy and beauty, 
in all Its healing and redemptive virtue. In one Gospel Christ 
is the true Fulfiller of the Law, and withal, by a touching con- 
trast, the Man of Sorrows. In another He is the Lord of Nature 
and the Leader of men; all seek Him; all yield to Him; He 
moves forward in the independence of majestic strength. Ina 
third He is active and all-embracing Compassion ; He is the 
Shepherd, Who goes forth as for His Life-work, to seek the 


sheep that was lost; He is the Good Samaritan¥. Thus the — 
obedience, the force, and the tenderness of His Humanity are’ 


successively depicted ; but room is left for another aspect of His 


t Rev. v.13: τῷ καθημένῳ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου. καὶ τῷ ᾿Αρνίῳ ἢ εὐλογία καὶ ἣ 

᾿ τιμὴ καὶ ἢ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰώνας τῶν αἰώνων. Cf. Ibid. xvii. 14: 

τὸ ᾿Αρνίον νικήσει αὐτοὺς, ὅτι Κύριος κυρίων ἐστὶ καὶ Βασιλεὺς βασιλέων. See 

also the remarkable expression xx. 6: ἔσονται ἱερεῖς τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, 

which clearly associates Christ with the Father in the highest honour which 

man can render to God, namely, the offering of sacrifice. 

υ Cf. Holtzmann, Die bc ha aaa ci Evangelien. [ 

LECT. 


a ωλιν .»“«Ἀ κα 


identical with the Christ of the Synoptists ? 245 


- Life, differing from these and yet in harmony with them. If we 
may dare so to speak, the synoptists approach their great Sub- 
ject from without, St. John unfolds it from within. St. John 
has been guided to pierce the veil of sense; he has penetrated 
far beyond the Human features, nay even beyond the Human 
thought and Human will of the Redeemer, into the central 
depths of His Eternal Personality. He sets forth the Life of 

_ our Lord and Saviour on the earth, not in-any one of the aspects 
which belong to It as Human, but as being the consistent and 
adequate expression of the glory of a Divine Person, manifested 
to men under a visible form. The miracles described, the dis- 
courses selected, the plan of the narrative, are all in harmony 
with the point of view of the fourth Evangelist, and it at once 
explains and accounts for them. 

Plainly, my brethren, two or more observers may approach 
the same object from different points of view, and may be even 
entirely absorbed with distinct aspects of it ; and yet it does not 
follow that any one of these aspects is necessarily at variance 

' with the others. Still less does it follow that one aspect alone ᾿ 
represents the truth. Socrates does not lose his identity, because 
he is so much more to Plato than he is to Xenophon. Each of 
yourselves may be studied at the same time by the anatomist 
and by the psychologist: Certainly the aspect of your complex 
hature which the one study insists upon, is sufficiently remote 
from the aspect which presents itself to the other: In the eyes 
of one observer you are purely spirit ; you are thought, affection, 
memory, will, imagination. As he analyses you he is almost in- 
different to the material body in which your higher nature is 
encased, upon which it has left its mark, and through which it 
expresses itself. But to the other observer this your material 
body is everything. Its veins and muscles, its pores and nerves, 
its colour, its proportions, its functions, absorb his whole atten- 
tion. He is nervously impatient of any speculations about you 
which cannot be tested by his instruments. Yet is there any 
real ground for a petty jealousy between the one study of your 
nature and the other? Is not each student a servant whom true. 
science will own as doing her work? May not each illustrate, 
supplement, balance, and check the conclusions of the other? 
Must you necessarily view yourselves as being purely mind, if 
you will not be persuaded that you are merely matter? Must 
you needs be materialists, if you will not become the most tran- 
scendental of mystics? Or will not a little physiology usefully 
restrain you from a fanciful supersensualism, while a study of 


v] 


246 The tetle * Son of Gon’ in the ὌΝ 


the immaterial side of your being forbids you to listen, even . 


for a moment, to the brutalizing suggestions of consistent ma- 
terialism ? 

These questions admit of easy reply ; each half of the truth 
is practically no less than speculatively necessary to the other. 
Nor is it otherwise with the general relation of the first three 
Gospels to the fourth. Yet it should be added that the Synop- 
tists do teach the Divine Nature of Jesus, although in the main 
His Sacred Manhood is most prominent in their pages. More- 
over the fourth Gospel, as has been noticed, abundantly insists 
upon Christ’s true Humanity. Had we not possessed the fourth 
Gospel, we should have known much less of one side of His Hu- 
man Character than we actually know. For in it we see Christ 
engaged in earnest conflict with the worldly and unbelieving 
spirit of His time, while surrounded by the little company of His 
disciples, and devoting Himself to them even ‘unto the end,’ The 
aspects of our Lord’s Humanity which are thus brought into 
prominence would have remained, comparatively speaking, in 


the shade, had the last Gospel not been written. But that © 


‘symmetrical conception’ of our Lord’s Character, which modern 
critics have remarked upon, as especially distinguishing the 
fourth Gospel, is to be referred to the manner in which St. John 
lays bare the eternal Personality of Jesus. For in It the scattered 
rays of glory which light up the earlier Evangelists find their 


point of unity. By laying such persistent stress upon Christ’s | 


Godhead, as the true seat of His Personality, the fourth Gospel 
is doctrinally complemental (how marvellous is the complement !) 
to the other three ; and yet these three are so full of suggestive 
implications that they practically anticipate the higher teaching 
of the fourth. . 

1. For in the synoptic Gospels Christ is called the Son of 
God in a higher sense than the ethical or than the theoeratic. 
In the Old Testament an anointed king or a saintly prophet is 
a son of God. Christ is not merely one among many sons. He 
is the Only, the Well-beloved Son of the Father*. His relation- 
ship to the Father is unshared by any other, and is absolutely 
unique. It is indeed probable that of our Lord’s contemporaries 


x Compare the voice from heaven at our Lord’s baptism, οὗτός ἐστιν 6 
ids μου ὃ ἀγαπητὸς, St. Matt. iii. 17, repeated at His transfiguration (Ibid. 
xvii. 5); the profound sense of His question to the Pharisees, τίνος vids 
ἐστιν; [sc. 6 Χριστὸς} (Ibid. xxii. 41). And that as the Tiss τοῦ Θεοῦ, 
Christ is superhuman, seems to be implied in the questions of the tempter. 
(Ibid. iv. 3, 6; St. Luke iv. 3, 9.) | — 

[ LECT. 


τ ᾽ 
ΤΥ a ae ny 


Szgnificance of the history of the Nativity. 547 


many applied to Him the title ‘Son of God’ only as an official 
designation of the Messiah ; while others used it to acknowledge 
that surpassing and perfect character which proclaimed Jesus of 
Nazareth to be the One Son, Who had appeared on earth, wor- 
thily showing forth the moral perfections of our Heavenly 
Father. But the official and ethical senses of the term are 
rooted in a deeper sense, which St. Luke connects with it at the 
beginning of his Gospel. ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon 
thee,’ so ran the angel-message to the Virgin-mother, ‘and the 
power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that 
Holy Thing Which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son 
of God y.’ This may be contrasted with the prediction respecting 
St.John the Baptist, that he should be filled with the Holy Ghost 
even from his mother’s womb. St. John then is in existence 
before his sanctification by the Holy Spirit ; but Christ’s Hu- 
manity Itself is formed by the agency of the Holy Ghost. In 
like manner St. Matthew’s record of the angel’s words asserts 
that our Lord was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost 8, 
_ But St. Matthew’s reference to the prophetic name Emmanuel ἢ, © 
points to the full truth, that Christ is the Son of God as being 
of the Divine Essence. 

2. Indeed the whole history of the Nativity and its attendant 
circumstances, guard the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke¢ 
against the inroads of Humanitarian interpreters. Our Lord’s 
Birth of a Virgin-mother is as irreconcileable with ‘an Ebionitic 
as it is with a Docetic conception of the entrance of the God-man 
into connexion with humanity?’ The worship of the Infant 


y St. Luke i. 35. 

* Ibid. ver. 15: Πνεύματος ᾿Αγίου πλησθήσεται ἔτι ex κοιλίας μητρὸς αὐτοῦ. 

a St. Matt. i. 20: τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ex Πνεύματός ἐστιν ᾿Αγίου. 

b Ibid. ver. 22. This prophecy was fulfilled when our Lord was called 
Jesus. Cf. Pearson on the Creed (ed. Oxf. 1847), art. ii. p. 89, and note. - 

¢ For a vindication of these narratives against the mythical theory of 
Strauss, see Dr. Mill’s Christian Advocate’s Publications for 1841, 1844, 
reprinted in his work on the ‘ Mythical Interpretation.’ “ 

ἀ Martensen, Christl. Dogm. ὃ 39 (Clark’s transl.): ‘Christ is born, not 
of the will of a man, nor of the will of the flesh ; but the holy Will of the 
Creator took the place of the will of man and of the will of the flesh. That 
is, the Creating Spirit, Who was in the beginning, fulfilled the function of 
the plastic principle. Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, the chosen woman 
of the chosen people. It was the task of Israel to provide, not, as has often 
‘been said, Christ Himself, but the mother of the Lord; to develope the 
susceptibility for Christ to a point where it might be able to manifest itself 
as the profoundest unity of nature and spirit—an unity which found expres- 
sion in the pure Virgin. In her the pious aspirations of Israel and of 


v] 


248 Significance of the Evangelical Canticles. 


Christ, in St. Matthew by the wise men, in St. Luke by the 
shepherds of Bethlehem, represents Jesus as the true Lord of 
humanity, whether Jewish or Gentile, whether educated or un- 
lettered. Especially noteworthy are the greetings addressed to 
the Mother of our Lord by heavenly as well as earthly visitants. 


The Lord is with her; she is graced and blessed among women®. 


Her Son will be great; He will be called the Son of the Highest ; 
His kingdom will have no end‘. Elizabeth echoes the angel’s 
words; Mary is blessed among women, and the Fruit of her 
womb is Blessed. Elizabeth marvels that such an one as herself 
should be visited by the Mother of her Lord 8. 

The Evangelical canticles, which we owe to the third Gospel, 
remarkably illustrate the point before us. They surround the 
cradle of the Infant Saviour with the devotional language of 
ancient Israel, now consecrated to the direct service of the In- 
carnate Lord. Mary, the Virgin-mother, already knows that all 
generations shall call her blessed ; for the Mighty One has done 
great things unto her», And as the moral and social fruits of 
the Incarnation unfold themselves before her prophetic eye, she 
proclaims that the promises to the forefathers are at length ful- 
filled, and that God, ‘remembering His mercy hath holpen His 
servant Israeli.’ Zacharias-rejoices that the Lord God of Israel 
has in the new-born Saviour redeemed His people* This 
Saviour is the Lord, whose forerunner has been announced by 
prophecy! ; He is the Day-star from on high, bringing a new 


mankind, and their faith in the promises, are centred. She is the purest 
point in history and in nature, and she therefore becomes the appointed 
medium for the New Creation. And while we must confess that this Virgin 
Birth is enveloped in a veil impenetrable to physical reasonings, yet we affirm 
it to be the only one which fully satisfies the demands of religion and theo- 
logy. This article of our Creed, ‘ conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the 
Virgin Mary,’ is the only sure defence against both the Ebionitic and the 
Docetic view of the entrance of the God-man into connexion with humanity,’ 

ὁ St. Luke i. 28: χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη" 6 Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ, εὐλογημένη 
σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν. 

f Ibid. ver. 32: οὗτος ἔσται μέγας, καὶ υἱὸς ὑψίστου κληθήσεται. Ver. 33: 
τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔσται τέλος. 

8 Ibid. ver. 42: εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶ, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς 
κοιλίας σοῦ. Ver. 43: καὶ πόθεν μοι τοῦτο, ἵνα ἔλθῃ ἣ μήτηρ τοῦ Κυρίου μου 
πρός με; 

r Ibid. ver. 48: ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσί με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί' ὅτι ἐποίησέ μοι 
μεγαλεῖα ὃ δυνατός. 

i [bid. vers. 51-55. k Tbid. ver. 68. 

1 Ibid. i. 69, Christ is the κέρας σωτηρίας. Ibid. ver. 76; to St. John it is 
said, mpomopevon γὰρ πρὸ προσώπου Kuplov, ἑτοιμάσαι ὁδοὺς αὐτοῦ. Cf. Mal. 
iii. 1, iv. 5. 

[LECT. 


= 
ee δ ΝΣ 


Our Lora’s Doctrine, according to the Synopitsts. 249 


morning to those who sat in the darkness and death-shadows of 
the world ™. Simeon desires to depart in peace, since his eyes 
have seen his Lord’s Salvation. The humble Babe Whom the 
old man takes in his arms belongs not .to the lowly scenes of 
Bethlehem and Nazareth; He isthe destined inheritance of the 
world. He is the Divine Saviour ; all nations are interested in 
His Birth; He is to shed light upon the heathen; He is to be 
the pride and glory of the new Israel ®. 

The accounts then of our Lord’s Birth in two of the synoptic 
Evangelists, as illustrated by the sacred songs of praisd and 
thanksgiving which St. Luke has preserved, point clearly to the 
entrance of a superhuman Being into this our human world. 
Who indeed He was, is stated more explicitly by St.John ; but 
St. John does not deem it necessary to repeat the history of His 
Advent. The accounts of the Annunciation and of the Mi- 
raculous Conception would not by themselves imply the Divinity 
of Christ. But they do imply that Christ is superhuman ; they 
harmonize with the kind of anticipations respecting Christ’s 
appearance in the world, which might be created by St. John’s 
doctrine of His pre-existent glory. These accounts cannot be 
forced within the limits, and made to illustrate the laws, of 
nature. But at least St. John’s narrative justifies the mysteries 
of the synoptic Gospels which would be unintelligible without 
it; and it is a vivid commentary upon hymns the lofty strains 
of which might of themselves be thought to savour of exag- 
geration. 

3. If the synoptists are in correspondence with St. John’s 
characteristic doctrine when they describe our Lord’s Nativity 
and its attendant circumstances, that correspondence is even 
more obvious in their accounts of His teaching, and in the 
pictures which they set before us of His Life and work. They 
present Him to us mainly, although not exclusively, as the Son 
of Man. As has already been hinted, that title, besides its 
direct signification of His true and representative Humanity, is 
itself the ‘product of a self-consciousness, for which the being 
human is not a matter of course, but something secondary and 


m δέ, Luke i. 78: ἐπεσκέψατο ἡμᾶς ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους, ἐπιφᾶναι τοῖς ἐν 
σκότει καὶ σκιᾷ θανάτου καθημένοις" τοῦ κατευθῦναι τοὺς πόδας ἡμῶν εἰς ὁδὸν 
εἰρήνης. Isa, ix. 1, xlii. 7, xlix. 9, ΙΧ. 2, are thus applied in a strictly 
spiritual sense. 

n. St. Luke ii. 30-32: τὸ σωτήριόν σου, ὃ ἡτοίμασας κατὰ πρόσωπον πάντων 
τῶν λαῶν" φῶς εἰς ἀποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν, καὶ δόξαν λαοῦ σου ᾿ΙἸσραήλ. Cf. Isa. 
XXxv. 7, xliv: 4. 

Vv] 


> 


250 The teaching of Christ according to the 5: ynoptests 


superinduced °.” In other words, this title implies an original 
Nature to Which Christ’s Humanity was a subsequent accretion, 
and in Which His true and deepest Consciousness, if we may 
dare so to speak, was at home. Thus, often in the synoptic 
Gospels He is called simply the SonP. He is the true Son of 
Man, but He is also the true Son of God. In Him Sonship 
attains its archetypal form ; in Him it is seen in its unsullied 
perfection. Accordingly He never calls the Father, our Father, 
as if He shared His Sonship with His followers. He always 
speaks of My Father®?. To this Divine Sonship He received 
witness from heaven both at His Baptism and at His Trans- 
figuration. In the parable of the vineyard, the prophets of the 
old theocracy are contrasted with the Son, not as His predeces- 
sors or rivals, but as His slaves". Thus He lives among men as 
the One True Son of His Father’s home. He is Alone free by 
birthright among a race of born slaves. Yet instead of guard- 
ing His solitary dignity with jealous exclusiveness, He vouch- 
safes to raise the slaves around, Him to an adopted sonship ; He 
will buy them out of bondage by pouring forth His Blood; He 
will lay down His Life, that He may prove the generosity of 
His measureless love towards them 5. 

The synoptic Gospels record parables in which Christ is 
Himself the central Figure. They record miracles which seem 
to have no ascertainable object beyond that of exhibiting the - 
superhuman might of the Worker. They tell us of His claim to 
forgive sins, and that He supported this claim by the exercise of 


ο Cf. Dorner, Person Christi, Einl. p. 82: ‘ Von einem Selbstbewusstseyn 
aus muss diese Bezeichnung ausgepragt seyn, fiir welches das Mensch-oder- 
Menschensohnseyn nicht das Niachstliegende, sich von selbst unmittelbar 
Verstehende, sondern das Secundiire, Hinzugekommene, war. Ist aber 
Christi Selbstbewusstseyn so geartet gewesen, dass das Menschseyn ihm als 
das Secundiare sich darstellte: so muss das Primiire in Seinem Bewusstseyn 
ein Anderes seyn, dasjenige, was sich, z. B. bei Johannes xvii. 5 ausspricht ; 
und das Urspriingliche, worin Sein Selbstbewusstseyn sich unmittelbar 
heimisch weiss (vgl. Luc. ii. 49) muss wenigstens von der Zeit an, wo Er 
sich selbst ganz hat, wo sein Innerstes Wirklichkeit geworden ist, das 
Gottliche gewesen seyn.’ 

P St. Matt. xi. 27, xxviii. 20. ; 

a Ibid. xviii. 10, 19, 35, xx. 23, xxvi. 53; cf. St. Luke xxiii. 46. 

r St. Matt. xxi. 34; ἀπέστειλε τοὺς δούλους αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς γεωργούς. Ibid. 
ver. 36: πάλιν ἀπέστειλεν ἄλλους δούλους. Ibid. ver. 37: ὕστερον δὲ ἀπέ:- 
στειλε πρὸς αὐτοὺς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, λέγων, “ Ἐντραπήσονται τὸν υἱόν Mov.’ 

5 ΤΌΪά. χχ. 28: ἦλθε... δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν. Ibid. 
Xxvi. 28: τὸ αἷμά μου, τὸ τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης, τὸ περὶ πολλῶν ἐκχυνόμενον εἰς 
ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. 

[ LECT. 


considered as tmphing His Divinity. 251 


His miraculous powers’. Equally with St. John they represent 
Him as claiming to be not merely the Teacher but the Object of 
His religion. He insists on faith in His own Person. He 
institutes the initial Sacrament, and He deliberately inserts His 
own Name into the sacramental formula; He inserts it between 
that of the Father and that of the Spirit*. Such  self-intrusion 
into the sphere of Divinity would be unintelligible if the synop- 
tists had really represented Jesus as only the teacher and founder 
of a religious doctrine or character. But if Christ is the Logos 
in St John, in these Gospels He is the Sophiay. Thus He 
ascribes to Himself the exclusive knowledge of the Highest. 
No statement in St. John really goes beyond the terms in which, 
according to two synoptists, He claims to know and to be known 
of the Father. ‘No man knoweth the Son but the Father, 
neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to 
whomsoever the Son will reveal Him%’ Here then is a recipro- 
cal relationship of equality: the Son Alone has a true knowledge 
of the Father ; the Son is Himself such, that the Father Alone 
understands Him. In these Gospels, moreover, Christ ascribes 
to Himself, sanctity ; He-even places Himself above the holiest 
thing in ancient Israel®. He and His people are greater than 
the greatest in the old covenant». He scruples not to proclaim 
His consciousness of having fulfilled His mission. He asserts 
that all power is committed to Him both on earth and in 
heaven’, All nations are to be made disciples of His religion 4. 

When we weigh the language of the first three Evangelists, it 
will be found that-Christ is represented by it as the Absolute 
Good and the Absolute Truth not less distinctly than in St. 
John. It is on this account that He is exhibited as in conflict 


t St. Matt. ix, 2-6; St. Luke v. 20, 24. u Tbid. xvi. 16, 17. 

x Tbid. xxviii. 19. Cf. Waterland’s Eighth Sermon at Lady Moyer’s Lec- 
ture, Works, vol. 11. p. 171. 

y St. Luke vii. 35: ἐδικαιώθη ἣ σοφία ἀπὸ τῶν τέκνων αὐτῆς πάντων. St. 
Matt. xi. 19, and apparently St. Luke xi. 49, where 7 σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ corres- 
ponds to ἐγώ in St. Matt. xxiii. 34. 

z St. Matt. xi. 27: ovdels ἐπιγινώσκει τὸν Υἱὸν εἰ μὴ 6 Πατήρ' οὐδὲ τὸν 
Πατέρα τὶς ἐπιγινώσκει, εἰ μὴ ὁ ids, καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν βούληται 6 Ὑἱὸς ἀποκαλύψαι. 
St. Luke x. 22: οὐδεὶς γινώσκει τίς ἐστιν 6 Ὑἱὸς εἰ μὴ 6 Πατὴρ, καὶ τίς 
ἐστιν ὃ Πατὴρ, εἰ μὴ ὁ Vids, καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν βούληται ὃ Ὑἱὸς ἀποκαλύψαι. See 
Mill on Myth. Interp. Pp. 59. 

ἃ St. Matt. xii. 6: λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅτι τοῦ ἱεροῦ μεῖζόν (Tisch.] ἐστιν ὧδε. 

b Ibid. xi. 11, xii. 41, 42, xxi. 33, sqq.; St. Luke vii. 28. 

¢ St. Matf. xi. 27; St. Luke x. 22; St. Matt. xxviii. 18: ἐδόθη μοι πᾶσα 
ἐξουσία ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ vijs. 4 St. Matt. xxviii. 19. 

Vv] | 


i 


252 Our Lord’s claims to rule the souls of men, 


not with subordinate or accidental forms of evil, but with the 
evil principle itself, with the prince of evil®. And, as the 
Absolute Good, Christ tests the moral worth or worthlessness of 
men by their acceptance or rejection, not of His doctrine but of 
His Person. It is St. Matthew who records such sentences as 
the following : ‘Be not ye called Rabbi; for One is your Master, 
even Christ‘;’ ‘He that loveth father or mother more than 
Me is not worthy of Mes; ‘ Whosoever shall confess Me before 
men, him will I confess also before My Father ;’ ‘Come unto 
Me, all ye that labour, and I will give you resti;’ ‘Take My 
yoke upon you, and learn of ΜῈ Κι᾽ In St. Matthew then Christ 
speaks as One Who knows Himself to be a universal and infallible 
Teacher in spiritual things; Who demands submission of all 
men, and at whatever cost or sacrifice; Who offers to man- 
kind those deepest consolations which are sought from all others, 
in vain. Nor is it otherwise with St. Luke and St. Mark. It 
is indeed remarkable that our Lord’s most absolute and peremp- 
tory claims! to rule over the affections and wills of men are 
recorded by the first and third, and not by the fourth Evan- 
gelist. These royal rights over the human soul can be justified 
upon no plea of human relationships between teacher and 
learner, between child and elder, between master and servant, 
between friend and friend. If the title of Divinity is more 
explicitly put forward in St. John, the rights which imply it are 
insisted on in words recorded by the earlier Evangelists. The 
synoptists represent our Lord, Who is the object of Christian 
faith no less than the Founder of Christianity, as designing the 
whole world for the field of His conquests™, and as claiming the 
submission of every individual human soul. All are to be 
brought to discipleship. Only then will the judgment come, 
when the Gospel has been announced to the whole circle of the 
nations". Christ, the Good and the Truth Incarnate, must 
reign throughout all time®, He knows, according to the synop- 


e St. Luke x. 18: ἐθεώρουν τὸν Σατανᾶν ὡς ἀστραπὴν ex τοῦ οὐρανοῦ 
πεσόντα. St. Matt. iv. 1-11, xii. 27-29, ΧΙ], 38, 39. 


¢ St. Matt. xxiii. 8. & Ibid. x. 37. 
h Ibid. ver. 32; St. Luke xii. 8. i St. Matt. xi. 28. 
k Ibid. ver. 29. 1 Thid. x. 39; St. Luke xiv. 26. 


m St. Matt. xxviii. 19: πορευθέντες οὖν μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη. St. Mark 
xvi. 15; St. Luke xxiv. 47. Cf. St. Matt. xiii. 32, 38, 41, xxiv. 14. , 
"9 St. Matt. xxiv. 14: καὶ κηρυχθήσεται τοῦτο τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας 
ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ, εἰς μαρτύριον πᾶσι τοῖς ἔθνεσι: καὶ τότε ἥξει τὸ τέλος. 
ο St. Luke xxii. 69: ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἔσται ὃ Tids τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καθήμενος ἐκ 
δεξιῶν τῆς δυνάμεως τοῦ Θεοῦ. ; 
[ LECT. 


are especially prominent tn the Synoptists. 253 


tists no less than St. John, that He is a perfect and final Reve- 
lation of God. He is the Centre-point of the history and of the 
hopes of man. None shall advance beyond Him: the preten- 
sion to surpass Him is but the symptom of disastrous error 
and reaction P. 

The Transfiguration is described by all the synoptists ; and it 
represents our Lord in His true relation to the legal and pro- 
phetic dispensations, and as visibly invested for the time being 
with a glory which was rightfully His. The Ascension secures 
His permanent investiture with that glory; and the Ascension 
is described by St. Mark and St. Luke. The Resurrection is 
recorded by the first three Evangelists as accurately as by the 
fourth; and it was to the Resurrection that He Himself appealed 
as being the sign by which men were to know His real claim 
upon their homage. In the first three Gospels, all of Christ’s 
humiliations are consistently linked to the assertion of His power, 
and to the consummation of His victory. He is buffeted, spat 
upon, scourged, crucified, only to rise from the dead the third 
day 4; His Resurrection is the prelude to His ascent to heaven. 
He leaves the world, yet He bequeaths the promise of His 
Presence. He promises to be wherever two or three are gathered 
in His Name’; He institutes the Sacrament of His Body and 
His Bloods; He declares that He will be among His people even 
to the end of the world t, 

4. But it is more particularly through our Lord’s discourses 
respecting the end of the world and the final judgment, as re- 
corded by the synoptists, that we may discern the matchless 
dignity of His Person. It is reflected in the position which He 
claims to fill with respect to the moral and material universe, 
and in the absolute finality which He attributes to His religion. 
The Lawgiver Who is above all other legislators, and: Who 
revises all other legislation, will also be the final Judge. At 


P St. Matt. xxiv. 23-26, &c. 

a Ibid. xx. 19; St. Mark x. 34; St. Luke xviii. 43. 

r St. Matt. xviii. 20: οὗ γάρ εἰσι δύο ἢ τρεῖς συνηγμένοι εἰς τὸ ἐμὸν ὄνομα, 
ἐκεῖ εἰμὶ ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν. 

8 Ibid. xxvi. 26 ; St. Mark xiv. 22; St. Luke XXxii. 19. 

t St. Matt. xxviii. 20: ἐγὼ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν εἶμι πάσας Tas ἡμέρας ἕως THs συντε- 
λείας τοῦ αἰῶνος. 

u [bid. vii. 22: πολλοὶ ἐροῦσί μοι ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, “ Κύριε, Κύριε, οὗ 
τῷ σῷ ὀνόματι προεφητεύσαμεν, καὶ τῷ σῷ ὀνόματι. δαιμόνια ἐξεβάλομεν, καὶ 
τῷ σῷ ὀνόματι δυνάμεις πολλὰς ἐποιήσαμεν ; > καὶ τότε ὁμολογήσω αὐτοῖς, ὅτι 

‘ οὐδέποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς. ἀποχωρεῖτε ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ of ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν." 
St. Luke xiii, 25. St. Matt. xiii. 41: ἀποστελεῖ ὃ Ὑἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τοὺς 
“‘Y ] 


254 Christ the Lord of the world ’s future. 


that last awful revelation of His personal glory, none shall be 
able to refuse Him submission. Then will He put an end to the 
humiliations and the sorrows of His Church; then, out of the 
fulness of His majesty, He will clothe His despised followers 
with glory ; He will allot the kingdom to those who have be- 
lieved on Him; and at His heavenly board they shall share for 
ever the royal feast of life. Certainly the Redeemer and Judge 
of men, to Whom all spiritual and natural forces, all earthly and 
heavenly powers must at last submit, is not merely.a divinely 
gifted prophet. His Person ‘has a metaphysical and cosmical 
significance x.’ None could preside so authoritatively over the 
history and destiny of the world who was not entitled to share 
the throne of its Creator. 

The eschatological discourses in the synoptists do but tally 
with the prologue of St. John’s Gospel. In contemplating the 
dignity of our Lord’s Person, the preceding Evangelists for the 
most part look forward ; St. John looks backward no less than 
forward. St. John dwells on Christ’s Pre-existence ; the synop- 
tists, if we may so phrase it, on his Post-existence. In the 
earlier Evangelists His personal glory is viewed in its relation to 
the future of the human race and of the universe; in St. John 
it is viewed in its relation to the origin of created things, and to 
the solitary and everlasting years of God. In St. John, Christ 
our Saviour is the First; in the synoptists He is more especially 
the Last. 

In the synoptic Gospels, then, the Person of Christ Divine 
and Human is the centre-point of the Christian religion. Christ 
is here the Supreme Lawgiver ; He is the Perfect Saint; He is 
the Judge of all men. He controls both worlds, the physical and 
the spiritual ; He bestows the forgiveness of sins, and the Holy 
Spirit; He promises everlasting life. His Presence is to be 
perpetuated on earth, while yet He will reign as Lord of heaven. 
‘The entire representation,’ says Professor Dorner, ‘of Christ 
which is given us by the synoptists, may be placed side by side 
with that given by St. John, as being altogether identical with 
it. For a faith moulded in obedience to the synoptic tradition 


ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ, kat συλλέξουσιν ἐκ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ πάντα τὰ σκάνδαλα 

καὶ τοὺς ποιοῦντας τὴν ἀνομίαν, καὶ βαλοῦσιν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν κάμινον τοῦ πυρός. 

Ibid. x. 32; St. Mark viii. 38. St. Matt. xxiv. 31: ἀποστελεῖ τοὺς ἀγγέλους 

αὐτοῦ μετὰ σάλπιγγος φωνῆς μεγάλης, καὶ ἐπισυνάξουσι τοὺς ἐκλεκτοὺς αὐτοῦ 

ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων ἀνέμων, am ἄκρων οὐρανῶν ἕως ἄκρων’ αὐτῶν. Ibid. xxv. 
34-46; St. Luke xii. 35, xvii. 30, 31. 
x Martensen, Christl. Dogm. § 128. 

[ LECT. 


Summary of the Synoptical Christology. 255 


concerning Christ, must have essentially the same features in 
its resulting conception of Christ as those which belong to the 
Christ of St. Johny.’ In other words, think over the miracles 
wrought by Christ and narrated by the synoptists, one by one. 
Think over the discourses spoken by Christ and recorded by the 
synoptists, one by one. Look at the whole bearing and scope of 
His Life, as the three first Evangelists describe It, from His 
supernatural Birth to His disappearance beyond the clouds of 
heaven. Mark well how pressing and tender, yet withal how 
full of stern and majestic Self-assertion, are His words! Con- 
sider how merciful and timely, yet also how expressive of imma- 
nent and unlimited power, are His miracles! Put the three 
representations of the Royal, the Human, and the Healing 
Redeemer together, and deny, if it is possible, that Jesus is 
Divine. If the Christ of the synoptists is not indeed an unreal 
phantom, such as Docetism might have constructed, He is far 
removed above the Ebionitic conception of a purely human 
Saviour. If Christ’s Pre-existence is only obscurely hinted at 
in the first three Gospels, His relation to the world of spirits is 
brought out in them even more clearly than in St. John by the 
discourses which they contain on the subject of the Last Judg- 
ment. If St. John could be blotted out from the pages of the 
New Testament, St. John’s central doctrine would still live on 
in the earlier Evangelists as implicitly contained within a history 
otherwise inexplicable, if not as the illuminating truth of a 
heavenly gnosis. There would still remain the picture of a Life 
Which belongs indeed to human history, but Which the laws 
that govern human history neither control nor can explain. 
It would still be certain that One had lived on earth, wielding 
miraculous powers, and claiming a moral and intellectual place 
which belongs only to the Most Holy ; and if the problem pre- 
sented to faith might seem for a moment to be more intricate, 
its final solution could not differ in substance from that which 
meets us in the pages of the beloved disciple. 

VY. But what avails it, say you, to shew that St. John is con- 
sistent with himself, and that he is not really at variance with 
the Evangelists who preceded him, if the doctrine which he 


Υ Dorner, Person Christi, Einl. p. 89: ‘Das synoptische Totalbild von 
Christus dem johanneischen insofern vollkommen an ‘die Seite setzen kaan, 
als der durch Vermittlung der synoptischen Tradition gebildete Glaube 
wesentlich ganz dieselben Ziige in seinem Christusbegriff haben musste, wie 
sie der johanneische Christus hat.’ For the preceding remarks, see Person 
Christi, Einl. pp. 80-89. 

v] 


~ 


256 Christ, thus Gov and Man, in One Person. ἡ 


teaches, and which the Creed re-asserts, is itself incredible? You 
object to this doctrine that it ‘involves an invincible contradic- 
tion.’ It represents Christ on the one hand as a Personal Being, 
while on the other it asserts that two mutually self-excluding 
Essences are really united in Him. How can He be personal, 
you ask, if He be in very truth both God and Man? If He is 
thus God and Man, is He not, in point of fact, a ‘double Being;’ 
and is not unity of being an indispensable condition of person- 
ality? Surely, you insist, this condition is forfeited by the very 
terms of the doctrine. Christ either is not both God and Man, 
or He is not a single Personality. To say that He is One Person 
in Two Natures is to affirm the existence of a miracle which is 
incredible, if for no other reason, simply on the score of its 
unintelligibility 2. 

This is what may be said ; but let us consider, first of all, 
whether to say this does not, however unintentionally, caricature 
the doctrine of St. John and of the Catholic Creed. Does it not 
seem as if both St. John and the Creed were at pains to make 
it clear that the Person of Christ in His pre-existent glory, in 
His state of humiliation and sorrow, and in the majesty of His 
mediatorial kingdom, is continuously, unalterably One? Does 
not the Nicene Creed, for instance, first name the Only-begotten 
Son of God, and then go on to say how for us men and for our 
salvation He was Himself made Man, and was crucified for us 
under Pontius Pilate? Does not St. John plainly refer to One 


z Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p.2: ‘Es gehért vor Allem zum Begriffe 
einer Person, dass sie im Kerne ihres Wesens eine Einheit bildet; nur unter 
dieser Voraussetzung lisst sie sich geschichtlich begreifen. Diese Einheit 
wird durch die herkémmliche Lehre in der Person des Welterlésers aufge- 
hoben. Jesus Christus wird in der kirchlichen Glaubenslehre als ein Doppel- 
Wesen dargestellt, als die persénliche Vereinigung zweier Wesenheiten, die 
an sich nichts mit einander gemein haben, sich vielmehr schlechthin wider- 
sprechen und nur vermdége eines alle Begriffe tibersteigenden Wunders in die 
engste und unaufléslichste Verbindung mit einander gebracht worden sind. 
Er ist demzufolge Mensch und Gott in einer und derselben Person. Die 
kirchlichen Theologen haben grosse Anstrengungen gemacht, um die unauf- 
lésliche Verbindung von Gott und Mensch in einer Person als begreiflich 
und méglich darzustellen ; sie haben sith aber zuletzt doch immer wieder zu 
dem Gestiindniss genéthigt gesehen, dass die Sache unbegreiflich sei, und 
dass ein undurchdringliches Geheimniss tiber dem Personleben Jesu Christi 
schwebe. Allein eine solche Berufung auf Geheimnisse und Wunder ist, wo 
es auf die Erklarung einer geschichtlichen Thatsache ankommt, fur die 
Wissenschaft ohne allen Werth; sie offenbart uns die Unfahigkeit des theo- 
logischen Denkens, das in sich'Widersprechende vorstellbar, das geschichtlich 
Unbegreifliche denkbar zu machen.’ Cf. Strauss, Leben Jesu, § 146; 
Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, ii. § 96-98. 

[ LECT. 


= 


Nestorians deny the unity of Christ's Person. 257 


and the Same Agent in such verses as the following? ‘< All 
things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything 
made that was made,’ ‘ He riseth from supper, and laid aside 
His garments; and-took a towel, and girded Himself. After 
that He poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the 
disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He 
was girded», If St. John or the Creed had proceeded to intro- 
duce a new subject to whom the circumstances of Christ’s earthly 
Life properly belonged, and who only maintained a mysterious, 
even although it were an indissoluble connexion with the Eternal 
Word in heaven, then the charge of making Christ a ‘ double 
Being’ would be warrantable. Nestorius was fairly liable to 
that charge. He practically denied that the Man Christ Jesus 
was One Person with the Eternal Word. In order to heighten 
the ethical import of the Human Life of Christ, Nestorianism 
represents our Lord as an individual Man, Who, although He is 
the temple and organ of the Deity to which He is united, yet 
has a separate basis of personality in His Human Nature. The 
individuality of the Son of Mary is thus treated as a distinct 
thing from that of the Eternal Word ; and the Christ of Nesto- 
rianism is really a ‘ double Being,’ or rather He is two distinct 
persons, mysteriously joined in one®. But the Church has 
formally condemned this error, and in so doing she was merely 
throwing into the form of a doctrinal proposition the plain 
import of the narrative of St. John’s Gospel 4, 

Undoubtedly, you reply, the Church has not allowed her doc- 


® St.John i. 3. > Ibid. xiii. 4, 5. 

¢ Ap. Marium Merc. p. 54: ‘ Non Maria peperit Deum. Non peperit 
creatura increabilem, sed peperit hominem Deitatis instrumentum. Divido 
naturas, sed conjungo reverentiam.’ Cf. Nestorii Ep. iii. ad Ccelestin. 
(Mansi, tom. iv. 1197): τὸ προελθεῖν τὸν Θεὸν Λόγον ἐκ τῆς χριστοτόκου 
παρθένου παρὰ τῆς θείας ἐδιδάχθην γραφῆς" τὸ δὲ γεννηθῆναι Θεὸν ἐξ αὐτῆς, 
οὐδαμοῦ ἐδιδάχθην. And his ‘famous’ saying, ‘I will never own a child of 
two months old to be God.’ (Labbe, iii. 506.) 

ἃ St. Leo in Epist. ad Leonem Aug. ed. Ballerino, 165 : ‘ Anathematizetur 
ergo Nestorius, qui beatam Virginem non Dei, sed hominis tantummodo cre- 
didit genitricem, ut aliam personam carnis faceret, aliam Deitatis; nec unum 
Christum in Verbo Dei et carne sentiret, sed separatum atque sejunctum 
alterum Filium Dei, alterum hominis predicaret.? See Confession of the 
Easterns, accepted by St. Cyril, Labbe, iii. 1107. Ὁμολογοῦμεν τὸν Κύριον 
ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, τὸν Tidy τοῦ Θεοῦ, Θεὸν τέλειον καὶ ἄνθρωπον τέλειον ex 
ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος, πρὸ αἰώνων μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα κατὰ 
τὴν Θεότητα, ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὸν αὐτὸν ἐκ Μαρίας κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρω- 
πότητα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα, ὁμοούσιον ἡμῖν κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρω- 
mérnta δύο γὰρ φύσεων ἕνωσις γέγονε. Κατὰ ταύτην τὴν τῆς ἀσυγχύτου ,“2 
ἑνώσεως ἔννοιαν ὁμολογοῦμεν τὴν ἅγίαν Παρθένον Θεοτόκον, διὰ τὸ τὸν Θεὸνν - 
71 5 ψ 


258 The ‘Communicatio tdiomatum,’ 


trine to be stated in terms which would dissolve the Redeemer into 
two distinct agents, and would so altogether forfeit the reality of 
redemption ®&. But the question is whether the orthodox state- 


Λόγον σαρκωθῆναι καὶ ἐνανθρωπῆσαι, καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς συλλήψεως ἑνῶσαι ἑαυτῷ 
τὸν ἐξ αὐτῆς ληφθέντα ναόν. Τὰς δὲ εὐαγγελικὰς περὶ τοῦ Κυρίου φωνὰς ἴσμεν 
τοὺς θεολόγους ἄνδρας τὰς μὲν κοινοποιοῦντας ὡς ἐφ᾽ ἑνὸς προσώπου, τὰς δὲ 
διαιροῦντας ὡς ἐπὶ δύο φύσεων, καὶ τὰς μὲν θεοπρεπεῖς κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα τοῦ 
Χριστοῦ, τὰς δὲ ταπεινὰς κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα αὐτοῦ παραδιδόντας. The 
definition of Chalcedon is equally emphatic on the subject of the Hypostatic 
Union. Routh, Scr. Op. ii. 78. Bright, Hist. Ch. p. 409. The title Theo- 
tokos, assigned to the Blessed Virgin by eminent Fathers before the Nestorian 
controversy (see Bright, ib. p. 302), and by the whole Church ever since the 
Council of Ephesus, is essentially a tribute to Christ’s personal glory. It is 
in exact accordance with that well-known Scriptural wsws loguendi, whereby 
Gop is said to have ‘ purchased the Church with His own Blood’ (Acts xx. 
28, see Lect. VI. ; and compare 1 Cor. ii. 8), as conversely, ‘the Son of Man,’ 
while yet on earth, is said to have been ‘in heaven’ (St. John iii. 13). This 
‘communicatio idiomatum,’ κοινοποίησις or ἀντίδοσις (St. John Dam. Orth. 
Fid. iii. 4), as it is technically termed, is only intelligible on the principle 
that whatever belongs to our Lord in either of His two spheres of Existence 
belongs to Him as the One Christ, Who is, and is to be spoken of as, both 
Gop and Man. In other words, the properties of both His Natures are the 
roperties of His Person. (Hooker, E. P. v. 53; St. Thom. Summ, iii. 16, 4.) 
n the same sense then as that in which St. Paul could attribute ‘crucifixion,’ 
and ‘shedding His Blood,’ to ‘ Gop,’ that is to say, to our Divine Saviour in 
His Manhood, the Church could attribute to Him Birth of a human Mother. 
The phrase θεοτόκος is implicitly sanctioned by the phrase αἷμα Θεοῦ, It 
presupposes the belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, is our Lord and 
Gop ; that ‘the Son which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlast- 
ing of the Father, very and eternal Gop, took Man’s Nature upon Him in the 
womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance,’ art. 2. In sub-apostolic language, 

6 yap Θεὸς ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς 6 Χριστὸς ἐκυοφορήθη ἀπὸ Μαρίας. Ign. ad Eph. 18. 
e Jackson on the Creed, Works, vol. vii. p. 294: ‘That proper blood 
wherewith God is said to have purchased the church, was the blood of the 
Son of God, the second Person in Trinity, after a more peculiar manner than 
it was the blood either of God the Father or of God the Holy Ghost. It was 
the blood of God the Father or of God the Holy Ghost, as all other creatures 
are, by common right of creation and preservation. It was the blood of 
God the Son alone by personal union. If this Son of God, and High Priest 
of our souls, had offered any other sacrifice for us than Himself, or the Man- 
hood thus personally united unto Him, His offering could not have been 
satisfactory, because in all other things created, the Father and the Holy 
Ghost had the same right or interest which the Son had, He could not have 
offered anything to Them which were not as truly Theirs as His. Only the 
Seed of Abraham, or Fruit of the Virgin’s womb Which He assumed into the 
Godhead, was by the assumption made so His own, as it was not Theirs, His 
own by incommunicable property of personal union. By reason of this 
incommunicable property in the woman’s seed, the Son of God might truly 
have said unto His Father, ‘Lord, Thou hast purchased the church, yet 
with My blood :’ but so could not the Man Christ Jesus say unto the Son 
of God, ‘Lord, Thou hast paid the ransom for the sins of the world, yet 

with My blood, not with Thine own.’ 

[ LECT. 


πὰ eae ae νι 


— aS SS | eee 


Christ's Manhood an tnstrument of Firs Deity. 259 


ment be really successful in avoiding the error which it depre- 
cates. Certainly the Church does say that ‘although Christ be 
God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.’ But is this 
possible ? How can Godhead and Manhood thus coalesce without 
forfeiture of that unity which is a condition of personality ἢ 

The answer to this question lies in the fact, upon which 
St. John insists with such prominence, that our Lord’s Godliead 
is the seat of His Personality. The Son of Mary is not a distinct 
human person mysteriously linked with the Divine Nature of 
the Eternal Word The Person of the Son of Mary is divine 
and eternal; 1. 15 none other than the Person of the Word. 
When He took upon Him to deliver man, the Eternal Word did 
not abhor the Virgin’s womb. He clothed Himself with man’s 
bodily and man’s immaterial nature; He united it to His Own 
Divinity. He ‘took man’s Nature upon Him in the womb of 
the Blessed Virgin, of her substance, so that two whole and_per- 
fect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were 
joined together in One Person, never to be divided, whereof is 
One Christ&.’ Thus to speak of Christ as a Man, at least with- 
out explanation, may lead to a serious misconception ; He is the 
Man, or rather He is Man. Christ’s Manhood is not of Itself an 
individual being ; It is not a seat and centre of personality; It 
has no conceivable existence apart from the act whereby the 
Eternal Word in becoming Incarnate called It into being and 
made It His Own}. It is a vesture which He has folded around 
His Person ; It is an instrument through which He places Him- 
self in contact with men, and whereby He acts upon humanity‘, 


f St. Ful. de Fide ad Petr. c.17: ‘Deus Verbum non accepit personam 
hominis, sed naturam ; et in eternam personam divinitatis accepit tempora- 
lem substantiam carnis.? St. Joh. Damasc. de Fid. Orthod. iii. 11: 6 Θεὸς 
Λόγος σαρκωθεὶς ob τὴν ἐν τῷ εἴδει θεωρουμένην, od yap πάσας τὰς ὑποστάσεις 
ἀνέλαβεν" ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν ἀτόμῳ, ἀπαρχὴν τοῦ ἡμετέρου φυράματος, οὐ Kad Eav- 
τὴν ὑποστᾶσαν καὶ ἄτομον χρηματίσασαν πρότερον, καὶ οὕτως bm αὐτοῦ προσ- 
ληφθεῖσαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῇ αὐτοῦ ὑποστάσει ὑπάρξασαν, αὕτη γὰρ ἣ ὑπόστασις τοῦ 
Θεοῦ Λόγου ἐγένετο τῇ σαρκὶ ὑπύστασις. He states this in other terms (6. 9) 
by saying that our Lord’s Humanity had no subsistence of itself. It was not 
ἰδιοσύστατος, nor was it strictly ἀνυπόστατος, but ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου 
ὑποστάσει ὑποστᾶσα, ἐνυπόστατος. He speaks too of Christ’s ὑπόστασις σύν- 
θετος. Hooker, E. Ρ. v. 52. 3. 8 Art. il. 

h St. Aug. c. Serm. Arian. c. 6: ‘Nec sic assumptus est [homo] ut pritis 
crearetur, post assumeretur, sed ut in ipsa assumptione crearetur.’ Newman’s 
Par. Sermons, vi. 68. 

i Jackson on the Creed, Works, vol. vii. p. 289: ‘The Humanity of 
Christ is such an instrument of the Divine Nature in His Person, as the 
hand of man is to the person or party whose hand it is. And it is well 
observed, whether by Aquinas himself or no I remember not, but by 


v} § 2 


/ 


260 Analogy from the composite nature of man. 


He wears It in heaven, and thus robed in It He represents, He 
impersonates, He pleads for the race of beings to which It 
belongs. In saying that Christ ‘took our nature upon Him,’ 
we imply that His Person existed before, and that the Manhood 
which He assumed was Itself impersonal. Therefore He did not 
make Himself a ‘double Being’ by becoming incarnate. His 
Manhood no more impaired the unity of His Person than each 
human body, with its various organs and capacities, impairs the 
unity of that personal principle which is the centre and pivot of 
each separate human existence, and which has its seat within 
the soul of each one of us. 

‘As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and 
man is one Christ.’ As the personality of man resides in the 
soul, after death has severed soul and body, so the Person of 
Christ had Its eternal seat in His Godhead before His Incarna- 
tion. Intimately as the ‘I, or personal principle within each 
of us, is associated with every movement of the body, the ‘I’ 
itself resides in the soul. The soul is that which is conscious, 
which remembers, which wills, and which thus realizes person- 
ality. Certainly it is true that in our present state of existence 
we have never as yet realized what personal existence is, apart 
from the body. But the youngest of us will do this, ere many 
years have passed. Meanwhile we know that, when divorced 
from the personal principle which rules and inspires it, the body 
is but a lump of lifeless clay. The body then does not superadd 
a second personality to that which is in the soul. It supplies 
the personal soul with an instrument; it introduces it to a 
sphere of action; it is the obedient slave, the plastic ductile 
form of the personal soul which tenants it. The hand is raised, 
the voice is heard ; but these are acts of the selfsame personality 


Viguerius, an accurate summist of Aquinas’ sums, that albeit the intellectual 
part of man be a spiritual substance, and separated from the matter or bodily 
part, yet is the union betwixt the hand and intellectual part of man no less 
firm, no less proper, than the union between the feet or other organical 
parts of sensitive creatures, and their sensitive souls or mere physical forms. 
For the intellectual part of man, whether it be the form of man truly, though 
not merely physical, or rather his essence, not his form at all, doth use his 
own hand not as the carpenter doth use his axe, that is, not as an external 
or separated, but as his proper united instrument: nor is the union between 
the hand as the instrument and intellective part as the artificer or commander 
of it an union of matter and form, but an union personal, or at the least 
such an union as resembles the hypostatical union between the Divine and 
Human Nature of Christ much better than any material union wherein 
philosophers or school-divines can make instance.’ Cf. Viguerius, Institu- 
tiones, c. 20. introd. p. 259, commenting on St. Thom. 3°. q. 2. a. 7 | 
LECT. 


Ee ae ee 


Alleged danger of Apollinarian error. 261 


as that which, in the invisible voiceless recesses of its immaterial 


- self, goes through intellectual acts of inference, or moral acts of 


aversion or of love. In short, man is at once animal and spirit, 
but his personal unity is not thereby impaired: and Jesus Christ 
is not other than a Single Person, although He has united the 
Perfect Nature of Man to His Divine and Eternal Being. 
Therefore, although He says ‘I and the Father are One,’ He 


never says ‘I and the Son’ or ‘I and the Word are One.’ For 


He is the Word; He is the Son. And His Human Life is not 
a distinct person, but the robe which is folded-around His 
Eternal Personality Κ. 

But if the illustration of the Creed is thus suggestive of the 
unity of Christ’s Person, is it, you may fairly ask, altogether in 
harmony with the Scriptural and Catholic doctrine of His 
Perfect Manhood? If Christ’s Humanity stands to His God- 
head in the relation of the body of a man to bis soul, does not 
this imply that Christ has no human Soul!, or at any rate no 
distinct human Will? You remind me that ‘the truth of our 
Lord’s Human Will is essential to the integrity of His Manhood, 
to the reality of His Incarnation, to the completeness of His 
redemptive work. It is plainly asserted by Scripture ; and the 
error which denies It has been condemned by the Church. Τῇ 
Nestorius errs on one side, Apollinaris, Eutyches, and finally the 
Monothelites, warn us how easily we may err on the other. 
Christ has a Human Will as being Perfect Man, no less than He 
has a Divine Will as being Perfect God. But this is not sug- 
gested by the analogy of the union of body and soul in man. 


And if there are two Wills in Christ, must there not also be two 


Persons? and may not the Sufferer Who kneels in Gethsemane 
be another than the Word by Whom all things were made ?’ 
Certainly, the illustration of the Creed cannot be pressed 
closely without risk of serious error. An illustration is gene- 
rally used to indicate correspondence in a single particular ; and 
it will not bear to be erected into an absolute and consistent 


Kk On the objection that the illustration in the Athanasian Creed favours 
Nestorianism, cf. St. Tho. 3%. 2. 5. 

1 This preliminary form of the objection is thus noticed by the Master of 
the Sentences, Petr. Lomb. 1. iii. ἃ. 5 (858). ‘Non accepit Verbum Dei 
personam hominis, sed naturam. E: A quibusdam opponitur, quod persona 
assumit personam. Persona enim est substantia rationalis individu nature, 
hoc autem est anima. Ergo si animam assumsit, et personam. Quod ideo 
non sequitur, quia anima non est persona, quando alii rei unita est perso- 
naliter, sed quando per se est. Illa autem anima (our Lord’s) nunquam fuit, 
τὶ esset alii rei conjuncta.’ 

Vv 


ν 


262 Leality of our Lord’s Human Will consistent 


parallel, supposed to be in all respects analogous to that with 
which it has a single point of correspondence. But the Creed 
protects itself elsewhere against any such misuse of this par- 
ticular illustration. The Creed says that as body and soul meet 
in a single man, so do Perfect Godhead and Perfect Manhood 
meet in one Christ. The Perfect Manhood of Christ, not His 
Body merely but His Soul, and therefore His Human Will, is 
part of the One Christ. Unless in His condescending love our 
Eternal Lord had thus taken upon Him our fallen nature in its 
integrity, that isto say, ἃ Human Soul as well as a Human 
Body, a Human Will as an integral element of the Human Soul, 
mankind would not have been really represented on the cross or 
before the throne. We should not have been truly redeemed or 
sanctified by a real union with the Most Holy. 

Yet in taking upon Him a Human Will, the Eternal Word 
did not assume a second principle of action which was de- 
structive of the real unity of His Person. Within the precincts 
of a single human soul may we not observe two principles of — 
volition, this higher and that lower, this animated almost en- 
tirely by reason, that as exclusively by passion? St. Paul has 
described the moral dualism within a single will which is cha- 
racteristic of the first stage of the regenerate life, in a wonderful 
passage of his Epistle to the Romans™, The real self is loyal to 
God ; yet the Christian sees within him a second self, warring 
against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to 
that which his central being, in its loyalty to God, energetically 
rejects®. Yet in this great conflict between the old and the new 
self of the regenerate man, there is, we know, no real schism of 
an indivisible person, although for the moment antagonist ele- 
ments within the soul are so engaged as to look like separate 
hostile agencies. The man’s lower nature is not a distinct 
person, yet it has what is almost a distinct will, and what is 
thus a shadow of the Created Will which Christ assumed along 
with His Human Nature. Of course in the Incarnate Christ, 
the Human Will, although a proper principle of action, was not, 


m Rom. vii. 14-25. Origen, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret understand 
this passage of the state of man before regeneration. St. Augustine was of 
this mind in his earlier theological life (Confess. vii. 21; Prop. 45 in Ep. ad 
Rom., quoted by Meyer, Romer. p. 246), but his struggle with the Pelagian _ 
heresy led him to understand the passage of the regenerate (Retractat. i. 23, 
ii. I; contr. duas Ep. Pelag. i. 10; contr. Faust. xv. 8). This judgment was 
accepted by the great divines of the middle ages, St. Anselm and Aquinas, 
and generally by the moderns; although of late there have been some earnest 
efforts to revive the Greek interpretation. Ὁ Rom. vii. 17, ai 23. 

LECT. 


with the Impersonality of [iis Manhood. 263 


could not be, in other than the most absolute harmony with the 
Will of God°. Christ’s sinlessness is, the historical expression of 
this harmony. The Human Will of Christ corresponded to the 
Eternal Will with unvarying accuracy ; because in point of fact 
God, Incarnate in Christ, willed each volition of Christ’s Human 
Will. Christ’s Human Will then had a distinct existence, yet 
Its free volitions were but the earthly echoes of the Will of the 
All-holyP. At the Temptation It was confronted with the per- 
sonal principle of evil; but the Tempter without was seconded 
by no pulse of sympathy within. The Human Will of Christ 
was incapable of willing evil. In Gethsemane It was thrown 
forward into strong relief as Jesus bent to accept the chalice of 
suffering from which His Human sensitiveness could not but 
shrink. But from the first It was controlled by the Divine Will 
to which It is indissolubly united ; just as, if we may use the 
comparison, in a holy man, passion and impulse are brought 
entirely under the empire of reason and conscience?. As God 
and Man, our Lord has two Wills; but the Divine Will origi- 
nates and rules His Action; the Human Will is but the docile 
servant of that Will of God which has its seat in Christ’s Divine 
and Eternal Persont. Here indeed we touch upon the line at 
which revealed truth shades off into inaccessible mystery. We 
may not seek to penetrate the secrets of that marvellous θεανδρικὴ 
ἐνέργεια: but at least we know that each Nature of Christ is 
perfect, and that the Person which unites them is One and in- 
dissolubles, 


ο This was the ground taken in the Sixth General Council, a.p. 680, 
when the language of Chalcedon was adapted to meet the error of the Mono- 
thelites. Avo φυσικὰς θελήσεις ἤτοι θελήματα ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ δύο φυσικὰς 
ἐνεργείας ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀσυγχύτως, κατὰ τὴν τῶν ἁγίων 
πατέρων διδασκαλίαν κηρύττομεν, καὶ δύο φυσικὰ θελήματα οὐκ ὑπεναντία, μὴ 
γένοιτο, καθὼς οἱ ἀσεβεῖς ἔφησαν αἱρετικοὶ, ἀλλ᾽ ἑπόμενον τὸ ἀνθρώπινον αὐτοῦ 
θέλημα, καὶ μὴ ἀντιπίπτον, ἢ ἀντιπαλαῖον μᾶλλον μὲν οὖν καὶ ὑποτασσόμενον 
τῷ θείῳ αὐτοῦ καὶ πανσθενεῖ θελήματι. Mansi, tom. xi. p. 637. Routh, Scr. 
Op. ii. 236. Hooker, E. P. v. 48. 9. 

P ‘In ancient language, a twofold voluntas is quite compatible with a single 
volitio.” Klee Dogmengesch. ii. 4. 6. 

a St. Maximus illustrates the two harmonious operations of the Two Wills 
in Christ, by the physical image of a heated sword which both cuts and burns. 
Disp. cont. Pyrrh. apud Klee ubi sup. 

r St. Ambros. de Fide, v. 6 : “ Didicisti, quod omnia sibi Ipsi subjicere possit 
secundum operationem utique Deitatis ; disce nunc quod secundum carnem 
omnia subjecta accipiat.’ 

8 St. Leo, Ep. ad Flavianum, c. 4: ‘Qui verus est Deus, idem verus est 
Homo; et nullum est in hac unitate mendacium, dum invicem sunt et hu- 
militas hominis et altitudo deitatis. Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius 


Υ] 


264 Mystery, no reasonable bar to fatth. 


For the illustration of the Creed might at least remind us 
that we carry about with us the mystery of a composite nature, 
which should lead a thoughtful man to pause before pressing 
such objections as are urged by modern scepticism against the 
truth of the Incarnation. The Christ Who is revealed in the 
Gospels and Who is worshipped by the Church, is rejected as 
being ‘an unintelligible wonder!’ True, He is, as well in His 
condescension as in His greatness, utterly beyond the scope of 
our finite comprehensions. ‘Salva proprietate utriusque Nature, 
et in unam coeunte personam, suscepta est a majestate humilitas, 
a virtute infirmitas, ab eternitate mortalitast.’ We do not pro- 
fess to solve the mystery of that Union between the Almighty, 
Omniscient, Omnipresent Being, and a Human Life, with its 
bounded powers, its limited knowledge, its restricted sphere. 
We only know that in Christ, the finite and the Infinite are thus 
united. But we can understand this mysterious union at least 
as well as we can understand the union of such an organism as 
the human body to a spiritual immaterial principle like the 
human soul. How does spirit thus league itself with matter ? 
Where and what is the life-principle of the body? Where is the 
exact frontier-line between sense and consciousness, between 
brain and thought, between the act of will and the movement of 
muscle? -Is human nature then so utterly commonplace, and 
have its secrets been so entirely unravelled by contemporary 
science, as entitle us to demand of the Almighty God that 
when He reveals Himself to us He shall disrobe Himself of 
mystery? If we reject His Self-revelation in the Person of 
Jesus Christ on the ground of our inability to understand the 
difficulties, great and undeniable, although not greater than we 
might have anticipated, which do in fact surround it; are we 
also prepared to conclude that, because we cannot explain how a 
spiritual principle like the soul can be robed in and act through 
a material body, we will therefore close our eyes to the argu- 
ments which certify us that the soul is an immaterial essence, 
and take refuge from this oppressive sense of mystery in some 
doctrine of consistent materialism ? 


communione quod proprium est; Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et 
carne exsequente quod carnis est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, alterum 
succumbit injuriis.’ St. Joh. Damasc. iii. 19: Θεοῦ ἐνανθρωπήσαντος, καὶ 7 
ἀνθρωπίνη αὐτοῦ ἐνέργεια θεία ἦν, ἤγουν τεθεωμένης καὶ οὐκ ἄμοιρος τῆς θείας 
αὐτοῦ ἐνεργείας" καὶ ἣ θεία αὐτοῦ ἐνέργεια οὐκ ἄμοιρος τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης αὐτοῦ 
ἐνεργείας" ἀλλ᾽ ἑκατέρα σὺν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ θεωρουμένης. He urges, here and in 
ili. 15, that Two Natures imply Two Energies co-operating, for no nature is 
avevépyntos. See St. Tho. 38, 19. 1. t St. Leo, Ep. ad F ear eas 
LECT. 


a A St 


Incarnation, how related to Creation. 265 


Certainly St. John’s doctrine of the Divinity of the Word 
Incarnate cannot be reasonably objected to on the score of its 
mysteriousness by those who allow themselves to face their real 
ignorance of the mysteries of our human nature. Nor does that 


doctrine involve a necessary internal self-contradiction on such a 


ground as that ‘the Word by Whom all things were made, and 
Who sustains all things, cannot become His Own creature.’ Un- 
doubtedly the Word Incarnate does not cease to be the Word ; 
but He can and does assume a Nature which He has created, 
and in which He dwells, that in it He may manifest Himself. 
Between the processes of Creation and Incarnation there is no 
necessary contradiction in Divine revelation, such as is presumed 
to exist by certain Pantheistic thinkers. He who becomes In- 
carnate creates the form in which He manifests Himself simul- 
taneously with the act of His Self-manifestation. Doubtless 
when we say that God creates, we imply that He gives an exist- 
ence to something other than Himself, Οἱ the other hand, it is 
certain that He does in a real sense Himself exist in each created 
object, not as being one with it, but as upholding it in being. He 
is in every such object the constitutive, sustaining, binding force 
which perpetuates its being. Thus in varying degrees the 
creatures are temples and organs of the indwelling Presence of 
the Creator, although in His Essence He is infinitely removed 
from them. If this is true of the irrational and, in a lower 
measure, even of the inanimate creatures, much more is it true 
of the family of man, and of each member of that family. In 
vast inorganic masses God discovers Himself as the supreme, 
creative, sustaining Force. In. the graduated orders of vital 
power which range throughout the animal and vegetable worlds, 
God unveils His activity as the Fountain of all life. In man, a 
creature exercising conscious reflective thought and free self- 
determining will, God proclaims Himself a free Intelligent 
Agent. Man indeed may, if he will, reveal much more than 
this of the beauty of God. Man may shed abroad, by the free — 
movement of his will, rays of God’s moral glory, of love, of 
mercy, of purity, of justice. Whether a man will thus declare 
the glory of his Maker depends not upon the necessary con- 
stitution of his nature, but upon the free co-operation of his will 
with the designs of God. God however is obviously able to 
create a Being who will reveal Him perfectly and of necessity, 
as expressing His perfect image and likeness before His creatures. 
All nature points to such a Being as its climax and consumma- 
tion. And such a Being is the Archetypal Manhood, assumed 
Υ] 


266 Origin of belief in the Godhead of Christ. 


by the Eternal Word. It is the climax of God’s creation ; It is 
the climax also of God’s Self-revelation. At this point God’s 
creative activity becomes entirely one with His Self-revealing 
activity. The Sacred Manhood is a creature, yet It is indis- 
solubly united to the Eternal Word. It differs from every other 
created being, in that God personally tenants It. So far then 
are Incarnation and Creation from being antagonistic concep- 
tions of the activity of God, that the absolutely Perfect Creature 
only exists as a perfect reflection of the Divine glory. In the 
Incarnation, God creates only to reveal, and He reveals perfectly 
by That which He creates. ‘The Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory™.’ 

VI. But if belief in our Lord’s Divinity, as taught by St. 
John, cannot be reasonably objected to on such grounds as have 
been noticed, can it be destroyed by a natural explanation of its 
upgrowth and formation? Here, undoubtedly, we touch upon a 
suspicion which underlies much of the current scepticism of the 
day; and with a few words on this momentous topic we may 
conclude the present lecture. 

Those who reject the doctrine that Christ is God are con- 
fronted by the consideration that, after the lapse of eighteen 
centuries since His appearance on this earth, He is believed in 
and worshipped as God by a Christendom which embraces the 
most civilized portion of the human family. The question arises 
how to account for this fact. There is no difficulty at all in 
accounting for it if we suppose Him to be, and to have pro- 
claimed Himself to be, a Divine Person. But if we hold that, 
as a matter of history, He believed Himself to be a mere man, 
how are we to explain the world-wide upgrowth of so extra- 
ordinary a belief about Him, as is this belief in His Divinity ? 
Scepticism may fold its arms and may smile at what it deems 
the intrinsic absurdity of the dogma believed in; but it cannot 
ignore the existing prevalence of the belief which accepts the 
dogma. ‘The belief is a phenomenon which at least challenges 
attention. How has that belief been spread? How is it that 
for eighteen hundred years, and at this hour, a conviction of the 
truth of the Godhead of Jesus dominates over the world of 
Christian thought? Here, if scepticism would save its intellec- 
tual credit, it must cease from the perpetual reiteration of doubts 
and negations, unrelieved by any frank assertions or admissions 
of positive truth. It must make a venture; it must commit 
itself to the responsibilities of a positive position, however inexact 

ᾳ On this subject, see Martensen, Christ]. Dogmat. ὃ 132. 


[ LECT. 


ee 


ee ee eee ee 


Theory of ‘Detfication by enthusiasm? 267 


and shadowy ; it must hazard an hypothesis and be prepared to 
defend it. 

Accordingly the theory which proposes to explain the belief 
of Christendom in the Godhead of Christ maintains that Christ 
was ‘deified’ by the enthusiasm of His first disciples. We are 
told that ‘man instinctively creates a creed that shall meet the 
wants and aspirations of his understanding and of his heart v.’ 
The teaching of Christ created in His first followers a passionate 
devotion to His Person, and a desire for unreserved submission to 
His dictatorship. Not that Christ’s Divinity was decreed Him by 
any formal act of public honour ; it was the spontaneous and 
irregular tribute of a passionate enthusiasm. Could any expres- 
sion of reverence seem exaggerated to an admiration and a love 
which knew no bounds? Could any intellectual price be too 
high to pay for the advantage of placing the authority of the 
Greatest of teachers upon that one basis of authority which is 
beyond assault? Do not love and reverence, centring upon a 
friend, upon a memory, with eager intensity, turn a somewhat 
impatient ear to the cautious protestations of the critical reason, 
when any such voice can make itself heard? Do they not pass 
by imperceptible degrees into adoration? Does not adoration 
take for granted the Divinity of the object which it has learned 
imperceptibly and unreflectingly to adore? The enthusiasm 
created by Jesus Christ in those around Him, thus comes to be 
eredited with the invention and propagation of the belief in His 
Divinity. ‘So mighty was the enthusiasm, that nothing short 
of that stupendous belief would satisfy it. The heart of 
Christendom gave law to its understanding. Christians wished 
Christ to be God, and they forthwith thought that they had 
sufficient reasons for believing in His Godhead. The feeling of 
a society of affectionate friends found its way in process of time 
into the world of speculation. It fell into the hands of the dia- 
lecticians, and into the hands of the metaphysicians; it was 
analysed, it was defined, it was coloured by contact with foreign 
speculations ; it was enlarged by the accretion of new intellectual 
material. At length Fathers and Councils had finished their 
graceless and pedantic task, and that which had at first been the 
fresh sentiment of simple and loving hearts was duly hardened 
and rounded off into a solid block of repulsive dogma.’ 

Now St. John’s writings are a standing difficulty in the way 
of this enterprising hypothesis. We have seen that the fourth 
Gospel must be recognised as St. John’s, unless, to use the words 

v Feuerbach, Geist. d. Christenth. Einl. 
¥ 


268 St. Fohn's writings fatal to the theory. 


of Ewald, ‘we are prepared knowingly to receive falsehood and 
to reject truth.’ But we have also seen that in the fourth 
Gospel, Jesus Christ is proclaimed to be God by the whole drift 
of the argument, and in terms as explicit as those of the Nicene 
Creed. We have not then to deal with any supposed process of 
deification, whereby the Person of Jesus was ‘transfigured’ in 
the apprehension of sub-apostolic, or post-apostolic Christendom. 
It is St. John who proclaims that Jesus is the Word Incarnate, 
and that the Word is God. How can we account for St. John’s 
conduct in representing Him as God, if He was in truth only 
man? It will not avail to argue that St. John wrote his Gospel 
in his old age, and that the memories of his youthful companion- 
ship with Jesus had been coloured, heightened, transformed, 
idealized, by the meditative enthusiasm of more than half a 
century. It will not avail to say that the reverence of the 
beloved disciple for his ascended Master was fatal to the accuracy 
of the portrait which he drew of Him. For what is this but to 
misapprehend the very fundamental nature of reverence? Truth 
is the basis, as it is the object of reverence, not less than of 
every other virtue. Reverence prostrates herself before ἃ great- 
ness the reality of which is obvious to her; but she would cease 
to be reverence if she could exaggerate the greatness which pro- 
' vokes her homage, not less surely than if she could depreciate 
or deny it. The sentiment which, in contemplating its object, 
abandons the guidance of fact for that of imagination, is disloyal 
to that honesty of purpose which is of the essence of reverence ; 
and it is certain at last to subserve the purposes of the scorner 
and the spoiler. St. John insists that he teaches the Church 
only that which he has seen and heard. Even a slight swerving 
from truth must be painful to genuine reverence; but what 
shall we say of an exaggeration so gigantic, if an exaggeration 
it be, as that which transforms a human friend into the Almighty 
and Everlasting God? If Jesus Christ is not God, how is it 
that the most intimate of His earthly friends, came to believe 
and to teach that He really is God ? 

Place yourselves, my brethren, fairly face to face with this 
difficulty ; imagine yourselves, for the moment, in the position 
of St. John. Think of any whom you have loved and revered, 
beyond measure, as it has seemed, in past years. He has 
gone; but you cling to him more earnestly in thought and 
affection than while he was here. You treasure his words, you 
revisit his haunts, you delight in the company of his friends, you 
represent to yourself his wonted turns of thought and phrase, 

: | LECT. 


Could St. Fohn have deified’ a human friend? 269 


you con over his handwriting, you fondle his likeness. These 
things are for you precious and sacred. Even now, there are 
, times when the tones of that welcome voice seem to fall with 
living power upon your strained ear. Even now, the outline 
of that countenance, upon which the grave has closed, flits, as 
; if capriciously, before your eye of sense. The air around you 
yields it perchance to your intent gaze, radiant with a higher 
beauty than it wore of old. Others, you feel, may be forgotten 

as memory grows weak, and the passing years bring with them 

the quick succession of new fields and objects of interest, press- 

ing importunately upon the heart and thoughts. But one such 
memory as 1 have glanced at, fades not at the bidding of time. 

It cannot fade ; it has become a part of the mind which clings 

_ to it. Some who are here may have known those whom they 
thus remember ; a few of us assuredly have known such. But can 

we conceive it possible that, after any lapse of time, we should 

ever express our reverence and love for the unearthly goodness, 

the moral strength, the tenderness of heart, the fearlessness, the 
justice, the unselfishness of our friend, by saying that he was 

not an ordinary human being, but a superhuman person? Can 

we imagine ourselves incorporating our recollections about him 

with some current theosophic doctrine elevating him to the rank 

of a Divine hypostasis? While he lies in his silent grave, can 

we picture ourselves describing him as the very absolute Light 

and Life, as the Incarnate Thought of the Most High, as stand- 

ing in a relationship altogether unique to the Eternal and Self- 
existent Being, nay, as being literally God? To say that ‘St. John 

lived in a different intellectual atmosphere from our own,’ does 

not meet the difficulty. If Jesus was merely human, St. John’s 
statements about Him are among the most preposterous fictions 
which have imposed upon the world. They were advanced with 

a full knowledge of all that they involved. St. John was at least 

as profoundly convinced as we are of the truth of the unity of 

the Supreme Being. St.John was at least as alive as we can 

be to the infinite interval which parts the highest of creatures 

from the Great Creator. [1 we are not naturally lured on by 

: some irresistible fascination, by the poetry or by the credulity of 
: our advancing years, to believe in the Godhead of the best man 
| whom we have ever known, neither was St. John. If Jesus had 
been merely human, St. John would have felt what we feel about 
a loved and revered friend whom we have lost. In proportion 
to our belief in our friend’s goodness, in proportion to our loving 
reverence for his character, is the strength of our conviction that 


ον 


290 Mankind not prone to ‘defy’ human virtue. 


we could not now do him a more cruel injury than by entwining 
a blasphemous fable, such as the ascription of Divinity would 
be, around the simple story of his merely human life. This 
‘ deification of Jesus by the enthusiasm’ of St. John would have 
been consistent neither with St. John’s reverence for God, nor 
with his real loyalty to a merely human friend and teacher. 
St. John worshipped the ‘jealous’ God of Israel; and he has 
recorded the warning which he himself received against wor- 
shipping the angel of the Apocalypsex. If Christ had not really 
been Divine, the real beauty of His Human Character would have 
been disfigured by any association with such legendary exagge- 
ration, and Christianity would assuredly have perished within the 
limits of the first century. 

The theory that Jesus was deified by enthusiasm assumes the 
existence of a general disposition in mankind which is unwar- 
ranted by experience. Generally speaking men are not eager to 
believe in the exalted virtue, much less in the superhuman origin 
or dignity, of their fellow-men. And to do them justice, the 
writers who maintain that Jesus was invested with Divine 
honours by popular fervour, illustrate the weakness of their own 
principle very conspicuously. While they assert that nothing 
was more easy and obvious for the disciple of the apestolic age 
than to believe in the Divinity of his Master, they themselves 
reject that truth with the greatest possible obstinacy and deter- 
mination ; well-attested though it be, now as then, by historical 
miracles and by overwhelming moral considerations ; but also 
proclaimed now, as it was not then, by the faith of eighteen cen- 
turies, and by the suffrages of all that is purest and truest in our 
existing civilization. 

But, it is suggested that the apostolic narrative itself bears 
out the doctrine that Jesus was deified through enthusiasm by 
its account of the functions which are ascribed, especially in 
St. John’s Gospel, to the Comforter. Was not the Comforter 
sent to testify of Jesus? Is it not said, ‘He shall glorify Me?’ 
Does not this language look like the later endeavour of a 
religious phrenzy, to account for exaggerations of which it 1s 
conscious, by a bold claim to supernatural illumination ? 

Now this suggestion implies that the last Discourse of our 
Lord is in reality a forgery, which can no more claim to repre- 
sent His real thought than the political speeches in Thucydides 
can be seriously supposed to express the minds of the speakers 
to whom they are severally attributed. Or, at the least, it im- 

x Rev. xxii. 9. . 
[ Lrcr. 


Ce, ΤῸΝ ΜΗ. 


Llluminative Office of the Floly Ghost. 271 


plies that a purely human feeling is here clothed by language 
ascribed-to our Lord Himself with the attributes of a Divine 
Person. Of course, if St. John was capable of deliberately 
attributing to his Master that which He did not say, he was 
equally capable of attributing to Him actions which He did not 
do ; and we are driven to imagine that the closest friend of 
Jesus was believed by apostolical Christendom to be writing a 
history, when in truth he was only composing a biographical 
novel. But, as Rousseau has observed in words which have 
been already quoted, the original inventor of the Gospel history 
would have been as miraculous a being as its historical Subject. 
And the moral fascination which the last discourse possesses for 
every pure and true soul at this hour, combines with the testi- 
mony of the Church to assure us that it could have been spoken 
by no merely human lips, and that it is beyond the inventive 
scope of even the highest human genius. Those three chapters 
which M. Renan pronounces to be full of ‘the dryness of meta- 
physics and the darkness of abstract dogmas’ have been, as a 
matter of fact, watered by the tears of all the purest love and 
deepest sorrow of Christian humanity for eighteen centuries: 
Never is the New Testament more able to dispense with external 
evidence than in those matchless words; nowhere more than 
here is it sensibly divine. 

Undoubtedly it is a fact that in these chapters our Lord does 
promise to His apostles the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit. 
It is true that the Spirit was to testify of Christ ¥ and to glorify 
Christ 2, and to guide the disciples into all @truth. But how? 
‘ He shall take of Mine and shall shew it unto you>;’ ‘ He shall 
teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance 
whatsoever I have said unto you’.’- The Holy Spirit was to 
bring the words and works and character of Jesus before the 
illuminated intelligence of the Apostles. The school of the 
Spirit was to be the school of reflection. But it was not to be 
the school of legendary invention. Acts, which, at the time of 
their being witnessed, might have appeared trivial or common- 
place, would be seen, under the guidance of the Spirit, to have 
had a deeper interest. Words, to which a transient or local 


y St. John xv. 26: ἐκεῖνος μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ. 

2 Tbid. xvi. 14: ἐκεῖνος ἐμὲ δοξάσει. 

* Ibid. ver. 13: ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. 

Ὁ Ibid. vers. 14. 15 : ἐκ τοῦ ἐμοῦ λήψεται, καὶ ἀναγγελεῖ ὑμῖν. 

© Thid. xiv. 26: ἐκεῖνος ὑμᾶς διδάξει πάντα, καὶ ὑπομνήσει ὑμᾶς πάντα ἃ 
εἶπον ὑμῖν. 


v] 


272 Guidance of the Spirit and natural observation. 


value had been assigned at first, would now be felt to invite 
a world-wide and eternal meaning. ‘These things understood 
not His disciples at the first,’ is true of much else besides the 
entry into Jerusalem4, Moral, spiritual, physical powers which, 
though unexplained, could never have passed for the product of 
purely human activity, would in time be referred by the Invisible 
Teacher to their true source ; they would be regarded with awe 
as the very rays of Deity. 

Thus the work of the Spirit would but complete, systematize, 
digest the results of previous natural observation. Certainly it 
was always impossible that any man could ‘say that Jesus is 
the Lord but by the Holy Ghost®.” The inward teaching of the 
Holy Ghost alone could make the Godhead of Jesus a certainty 
of faith as well as a conclusion of the intellect. But the intel- 
lectual conditions of belief were at first inseparable from natural 
contact with the living Human Form of Jesus during the years 
of His earthly life. Our Lord implies this in saying ‘ Ye also 
shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the 
beginning.’ The Apostles lived with One Who combined an 
exercise of the highest miraculous powers with a faultless human 
character, and Who asserted Himself, by implication and ex- 
pressly, to be personally God. The Spirit strengthened and 
formalized that earlier and more vague belief which was created 
by His language ; but it was His language which had fallen on 
the natural ears of the Apostles, and which was the germinal 
principle of their riper faith in His Divinity. 

The unbelief of our day is naturally anxious to evade the 
startling fact that the most intimate of the companions of Jesus 
is also the most strenuous assertor of His Godhead. There is a 
proverb to the effect that no man’s life should be written by his 
private servant. That proverb expresses the general conviction 
of mankind that, as a rule, like some mountain scenery or ruined 
castles, moral greatness in men is more picturesque when it is 
viewed from a distance. The proverb bids you not to scrutinize 
even a good man too narrowly, lest perchance you should dis- _ 
cover flaws in his character which will somewhat rudely shake 
your conviction of his goodness. It is hinted that some un- 
obtrusive weaknesses which escape public observation will be 
obvious to a man’s everyday companion, and will be fatal to the 
higher estimate which, but for such close scrutiny, might have 
been formed respecting him. But in the case of Jesus Christ 

ἃ St. John xii. 14-16. 

e 1 Cor. xii.3 : οὐδεὶς δύναται εἰπεῖν Κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν, εἰ μὴ ἐν Πνεύματι ᾿Αγίῳ. 

[ LECT. 


-——” . οὐδ ον ee 
i i Deni Ὁ τον: 


era δ ee SS ae. νυ, » 


τ Szgntficance of St.F ohn’s intimacy.with ourLord. 273 


the moral of this cynical proverb is altogether at fault. Jesus 
Christ chooses one disciple to be the privileged sharer of a 
nearer intimacy than any other. The son of Zebedee lies upon 
His bosom at supper; he is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ 
Along with St. Peter and St. James, this disciple is taken to the 
holy mount, that he may witness the glory of his Transfigured 
Lord. He enters the empty tomb on the morning of the Resur- 
rection. He is in the upper chamber when the risen Jesus 
blessed the ten and the eleven. He is on the mount of the 
Ascension when the Conqueror moves up visibly into heaven. 
But he also is summoned to the garden where Jesus kneels in 
agony beneath the olive-trees ; and alone of the twelve he faces 


the fierce multitude on the road to Calvary, and stands with 


Mary beneath the cross, and sees Jesus die. He sees more of 
the Divine Master than any other, more of His glory, more too 
of His humiliation. His witness is proportioned to his nearer 
and closer observation. Whether he is writing Epistles of en- 
couragement and warning, or narrating heavenly visions touch- 
ing the future of the Church, or recording the experiences of 
those years when he enjoyed that intimate, unmatched com- 
panionship,—St. John, beyond any other of the sacred writers, 
is the persistent herald and teacher of our Lord’s Divinity. 

How and by what successive steps it was that the full truth 


embodied in his Gospel respecting the Person of his Lord made 


its way into and mastered the soul of the beloved disciple, who 
indeed shall presume to say? Who of us can determine the 
exact and varied observations whereby we learn to measure and 
to revere the component elements even of a great human cha- 
racter? The absorbing interest of such a process is generally 
fatal to an accurate analysis of its stages. We penetrate deeper 
and deeper, we mount higher and higher, as we follow the 
complex system of motives, capacities, dispositions, which, one 
after another, open upon us. We cannot, on looking back, say 
when this or that feature became distinctly clear to us. We 
know not now by what additions and developments the general 
impression which we have received took its shape and outline, 
St. John would doubtless have learnt portions of the mighty 
truth from definite statements and at specified times. The real 
sense of prophecy‘, the explicit confessions of disciples’, the 


* St. John xii. 41: ταῦτα εἶπεν Ἡσαΐας, ὅτε εἶδε τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ 
ἐλάλησε περὶ αὐτοῦ. Isa. vi. 9. 

8. St. John i. 49. After our Lord’s words implying His omnipresence, 
Ἔ yi says, ‘PaBBl, σὺ εἶ ὁ Tids τοῦ Θεοῦ. 
Vv T 


274 The most intimate companionship with Sesus 


assertions by which our Lord replied to the malice or to the 
ignorance of His opponents), were doubtless distinct elements 
of the Apostle’s training in the school of truth. St. John must 
have learned something of Christ’s Divine power when, at His 
word, the putrid corpse of Lazarus, bound with its grave-clothes, 
moved forward into air and life. St. John must have learned 
yet more of his Master’s condescension when,’ girded with a 
towel, Jesus bent Himself to the earth, that He might wash the 
feet of the traitor Judas. Each miracle, each discourse supplied 
a distinct ray of light; but the total impression must have been 
formed, strengthened, deepened, by the incidents of daily inter- 
course, by the effects of hourly, momentary observation. For 
every human soul, encased in its earthly prison-house, seeks and 
finds publicity through countless outlets. The immaterial spirit 
traces its history with an almost invisible delicacy upon the 
coarse hard matter which is its servant and its organ. The un- 
conscious, involuntary movements of manner and countenance, 
the unstudied phrases of daily or of casual conversation, the 
emphasis of silence not less than the emphasis of speech, help in 
various ways to complete that self-revelation which every indi- 
vidual character makes to all around, and which is studied by 
all in each. Not otherwise did the Incarnate Word reveal Him- 
self to the purest and keenest love which He found and chose 
from among the sons of men. One flaw or fault of temper, one 
᾿ς symptom of moral impotence, or of moral perversion, one hasty 
word, one ill-considered act, would have shattered the ideal for 
ever. But, in fact, to St. John the Life of Jesus was as the light 
of heaven; it was as one constant unfailing outflow of beauty, 
ever varying its illuminating powers as it falls upon the leaves of 
the forest oak or upon the countless ripples of the ocean. In the 
eyes of St. John the Eternal Person of Jesus shone forth through 
His Humanity with translucent splendour, and wove and folded 
around itself, as the days and weeks passed on, a moral history 
of faultless grandeur. It was not the disciple who idealized the 
Master ; it was the Master Who revealed Himself in His majestic 
glory to the illumined eye and to the entranced touch of the 
disciple. No treachery of memory, no ardour of temperament, 
no sustained reflectiveness of soul, could have compassed the 
transformation of a human friend into the Almighty and Ever- 
lasting Being. Nor was there room for serious error of judg- - 
ment after a companionship so intimate, so heart-searching, so 


h St. John viii. 58, &c. 
| [ LECT. 


~~ a 1. ἃ 


a ΠΥ - ἘΠ ΣΧ 
: 


es eS 


ia a πες χα 


assues in the strongest assertions of 3715 Divinity. 275. 


true, as had been that of Jesus with St. John. And thus to the 
beloved disciple the Divinity of his Lord was not a scholastic 
formula, nor a pious conjecture, nor a controversial thesis, nor 
the adaptation of a popular superstition to meet the demands of 
a strong enthusiasm, nor a mystic reverie. It was nothing less 
than a fact of personal experience. ‘That Which was from the 
beginning, Which we have heard, Which we have seen with our 
eyes, Which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, 
of the-Word of Life; (for the Life was manifested, and we have 
seen It, and bear witness, and shew unto you that Eternal Life, 
Which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us ;) That 
Which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.’ 


LECTURE VI. 


OUR LORD’S DIVINITY AS TAUGHT BY ST. JAMES, 
ST. PETER, AND ST. PAUL. 


And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived 
the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the 
right hands of fellowship ; that we should go unto the heathen, and they 
unto the circumcision.—Gat. ii. 9. 


THE meditative temper of thought and phrase, which is so ob- 
servable in St. John, may be thought to bear in two different 
manners upon the question before us in these lectures. On the 
one hand, such a temper, regarded from a point of view entirely 
naturalistic, must be admitted to be a guarantee against the pre- 
sumption that St. John, in his enthusiastic devotion to Jesus, 
committed himself to hasty beliefs and assertions respecting the 
Person of his Friend and Master. An over-eager and undis- 
criminating admiration would not naturally express itself ἴῃ 
metaphysical terminology of a reflective and mystical character. 
But on the other hand, it may be asked whether too much stress 
has not been laid by the argument of the last lecture upon the 
witness of St. John? Can the conclusions of a mind of high- 
strung and contemplative temper be accepted as little less, if at 
all less, than a sufficient basis for a cardinal point of belief in the 
religion of mankind? May not such a belief be inextricably 
linked to the moral and intellectual idiosyncrasies of the single 
soul? The belief may indeed be the honest and adequate result 
of that particular measure and kind of observation and reflection 
which a single mind has achieved. As such the belief may be 
a worthy object of philosophical interest and respect ; but is not 
this respect and interest due to it on the precise ground that it 
is the true native product of a group of conditions, which co- 
exist nowhere else save in the particular mind which generated 
it? Will the belief, in short, bear transplantation into the moral 
and mental soil around? Can it be nourished and ~~ on 

me LECT. 


ον » 


St. Fohn’s Christology, shared by the other apostles, 277 


by minds of a different calibre, by characters of a distinct cast 
from that in which it originally grew? Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
for instance, had private beliefs which were obviously due to the 
tone and genius of his particular character. These beliefs go far 
to constitute the charm of the picture with which we are familiar 
in the pages of Boswell. But our respect for Dr. Johnson does 
not force us to accept each and all of his quaint beliefs. They 
are peculiar to himself, being such as he was. We admire them 
as belonging to the attractive and eccentric individuality of the 
man. We do not suppose that they are capable of being domes- 
ticated in the general and diversified mind of England. 

Now, if it be hinted that some similar estimate should be 
formed respecting St. John’s doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity, the 
present, for obvious reasons, is not the moment to insist upon a 
consideration which for us Christians must have paramount 
weight, namely, that St. John was taught by an infallible 
Teacher, by none other than God the Holy Ghost. But let us 
remark, first of all, the fact that St. John did convey to a large 
circle of minds his own deep conviction that his Friend and 
Master was a Divine Person; paradoxical as that conviction 
must at first have seemed to them. If we could have travelled 
through Asia Minor at the end of the first century of our era, 
we should have fallen in with a number of persons, in various 
ranks of society, who so entirely believed in St. John’s doctrine, 
as to be willing to die for it without any kind of hesitation®. 
But it would have been a mistake to suppose that the prevalence 
of the doctrine was due only to the activity of St. John. While 
St. John was teaching this doctrine under the form which he 
had been guided to adopt, a parallel communication of the sub- 
stance of the doctrine was taking place in several other quarters. 
St. John was supported, if I may be allowed to use such an ex- 
pression, by men whose minds were of a totally distinct natural 
cast, and who expressed their thoughts in a religious phraseology 
which had little enough in common with that which was current 
in the school of Ephesus. Nevertheless it will be our duty this 


8 The Apocalypse was probably written immediately after Domitian’s 
persecution of the Church. Antipas had been martyred at Pergamos. 
(Rev. ii. 13.) St. John saw the souls of martyrs who had been beheaded 
with the axe; εἶδον τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν πεπελεκισμένων διὰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν *Incod. 
(Rev. xx. 4.) This was the Roman custom at executions. In the perse- 
cution under Nero other and more cruel kinds of death had been inflicted. 
The Bishops of Pergamos (Ibid. ii. 13) and Philadelphia (Ibid. iii. 8) had 
confessed Christ. St. Clement of Rome alludes to the violence of this perse- 
ary (Ep. ad Cor. 6.) The Apostle himself was banished to Patmos. 

VI 


278 Doctrinal bearings of the meeting at Ferusalem. 


morning to observe, how radical was their agreement with 
St. John, in urging upon the acceptance of the human race the’ 
doctrine that Jesus Christ is God. 

Very ingenious theories concerning a supposed division of the 
Apostolical Church into schools of thought holding antagonistic 
beliefs, have been advanced of late years. And they have had 
the effect of directing a large amount of attention to the account 
which St. Paul gives, in his Epistle to the Galatians; of his inter- 
view with the leading Apostles at Jerusalem. The accuracy of 
that account is not questioned even by the most destructive of 
the Tiibingen divines. According to St. Irenzeus and the great 
majority of authorities, both ancient and modern, the interview 
took place on the occasion of St. Paul’s attendance at the Apo- 
stolical Council of Jerusalem. St. Paul says that St. James, 
St. Peter, and St. John, who were looked upon as ‘pillars’ of 
the Church, among the J udaizing Christians as well as among 
Christians generally, gave the right hands of fellowship to him- 
self and to Barnabas. ‘It was agreed,’ says St. Paul, ‘that we 
should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.’ 
Now the historical interest which attaches to this recorded 
division of labour among the leading Apostles, is sufficiently 
obvious ; but the dogmatic interest of the passage, although less 
direct, is even higher than the historical. This passage warrants 
us in inferring at least thus much ;—that the leading Apostles 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ were not hopelessly at 
issue with each other on a subject of such central and primary 
importance as the Divine and Eternal Nature of their Master. 

It might well seem, at first sight, that to draw such an 
inference at all within the walls of a Christian church was itself 
an act for which the faith of Christians would exact an apology. 
But those who are acquainted with the imaginative licence of 
recent theories will not deem our inference altogether im- 
pertinent and superfluous. Of late years St. James has been 
represented as more of a Jew than a Christian, and as holding 
in reality a purely Ebionitic and Humanitarian belief as to the 
Person of Jesus. St. Paul has been described as the teacher of 
such a doctrine of the Subordination of the Son as to be prac- 
tically Arian. St. Peter is then exhibited as occupying a feeble 
undecided dogmatic position, intermediate to the doctrines of 
St. Paul and St. James; while all the three are contrasted with | 
the distinct and lofty Christology, said to be proper to the gnosis 
of St. John. Now, as has been already remarked, the historical 
trustworthiness of the passage in the Galatians has “ἴω been 

LECT. 


Lhe Apostles not indifferent to doctrinal truth, 279 


disputed even by the Tiibingen divines. That passage repre- 
sents St. John as intimately associated, not merely with St. Peter 
but with St. James.. It moreover represents these three apostles 
as giving pledges of spiritual co-operation and fellowship, from 
their common basis of belief and action, to the more recent con- 
vert St. Paul. Is it to be supposed that St. Paul could have 
been thus accepted as a fellow-worker on one and the same 
occasion by the Apostle who is said to be a simple Humani- 
. tarian, and by the Apostle whose whole teaching centres in Jesus 
considered as the historical manifestation of the Eternal Word ? 
Or are we to imagine that the apostles of Christ anticipated 
that indifference to doctrinal exactness which is characteristic 
of some modern schools? Did they regard the question of our 
Lord’s Personal Godhead as a kind of speculative curiosity ; as 
a scholastic conceit; as having no necessary connexion with 
vital, essential, fundamental Christianity? And is St. Paul, in 
his Epistle to the Galatians, only describing the first great ec- 
clesiastical compromise, in which truths of primary importance 
were sacrificed for an immediate practical object, more ruthlessly 
than on any subsequent occasion ? : 

My brethren, the answer to these questions could not be 
really doubtful to any except the most paradoxical of modern 
theorists. To say nothing of St. Peter and St. Jude, St. Paul’s 
general language on the subject of heresy», and St. John’s parti- 
cular application of such terms as ‘the liar’ and ‘antichrist ©’ to 
Cerinthus and other heretics, make the supposition of such in- 
difference as is here in question, in the case of the apostles, 
utterly inadmissible. Ifthe apostles had differed vitally respect- 
ing the Person of Christ, they would have shattered the work of 
Pentecost in its infancy. And the terms in which they speak of 
each other would be reduced to the level of meaningless or 


b He speaks of αἱρέσεις in the sense of sectarian movements tending to or 
resulting in separation from the Church, as a form of evil which becomes the 
unwilling instrument of good (1 Cor. xi. 19). And αἱρέσεις are thus classed 
among the works of the flesh (Gal. v. 20). Using the word in its sense of 
dogmatic error on vital points, St. Paul bids Titus reject a ‘ heretic’ after 
two warnings from the communion of the Church: αἱρετικὸν ἄνθρωπον μετὰ 
μίαν καὶ δευτέραν νουθεσίαν παραιτοῦ (Tit. iii. 10). On the inviolate sacred- 
ness of the apostolical doctrine, cf. Gal. i. 8: ἐὰν ἡμεῖς ἢ ἄγγελος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ 
εὐαγγελίζηται ὑμῖν παρ᾽ ὃ εὐηγγελισάμεθα ὑμῖν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. Cf. 2 Pet. ii. 1. 

© 1 St. John ii. 22: τίς ἐστιν ὃ ψεύστης, εἰ μὴ 6 ἀρνούμενος ὅτι ᾿Ιησοῦς οὐκ 
ἔστιν ὃ Χριστός : οὗτός ἐστιν ὃ ἀντίχριστος, ὃ ἀρνούμενος τὸν Πατέρα καὶ τὸν 
Tidv. πᾶς 5 ἀρνούμενος τὸν Ὑἱὸν, οὐδὲ τὸν Πατέρα ἔχει. Cf. Ibid. iv. 3; 
2 St. John 7. 


VI | 


280 The Apostles preach one Divine Christ. 


insincere conventionalities4. Considering that the Gospel pre- 
sented itself to the world as an absolute and exclusive draught 
of Divine truth, contrasted as such with the perpetually-shifting 
forms of human thought around it; we may deem it ante- 
cedently probable, that those critics are mistaken, who profess 
to have discovered at the very fountain-head of Christianity at 
least three entirely distinct doctrines, respecting so fundamental 
a question as the Personal Rank of Christ in the scale of being. 
Undoubtedly it is true that as the Evangelists approach the 
Person of our Lord from distinct points of view, so do the 
writers of the apostolic epistles represent different attitudes of 
the human soul towards the one evangelical truth ; and in this 
way they impersonate types of thought and feeling:which have 
ever since found a welcome and a home in the world-embracing 
Church of Jesus Christ. St. James insists most earnestly on the 
moral obligations of Christian believers ; and he connects the Old 
Testament with the New by shewing the place of the law, now 
elevated and transfigured into a law of liberty, in the new life of 
Christians. He may indeed for a moment engage in the refuta- 
tion of a false doctrine of justification by faith®. But this is 
because such a doctrine prevents Christians from duly recogniz- 
ing those moral and spiritual truths and obligations upon which 
the Apostle is most eagerly insisting. Throughout his Epistle, 
doctrine is, comparatively speaking, thrown into the background ; 
he is intent upon practical considerations, to the total, or well- 
nigh total, exclusion of doctrinal topics. St. Paul, on the other 
hand, abounds in dogmatic statements. Still, in St. Paul, doc- 


4 St. Paul associates himself with the other apostles as bearing the stress 
of a common confessorship for Christ (2 Cor. xii. 12). The apostles are, 
together with the prophets, the foundations of the Church (Eph. ii. 20), 
The apostles are first in order (Eph. iv. 11). Although the grace of God in 
himself had laboured more abundantly than all the apostles, St. Paul terms 
himself the least of the apostolic college (1 Cor. xv. 9). The equality of the 
Gentile believers in Christ with the Jewish believers was a truth made known 
to St. Paul by special revelation, and he called it his Gospel; but it implied 
no properly doctrinal difference between himself and the apostles of the 
circumcision. The harmonious action of the.apostles as a united spiritual 
corporation is implied in such passages as 2 Pet. iii. 2, St. Jude 17; and neither 
of these passages affords ground for Baur’s inference respecting the post- 
apostolic age of the writer. In 2 St. Pet. iii. 15, 16, St. Peter distinguishes 
between the real mind of ‘our beloved brother Paul’ as being in perfect 
agreement with his own, and the abuse which had been made by teachers of 
error of certain difficult truths put forward in the Pauline Epistles: δυσνόητά 
τινα, ἃ of ἀμαθεῖς Kal ἀστήρικτοι στρεβλοῦσιν ὡς Kal τὰς λοιπὰς γραφὰς, πρὸς 
τὴν ἰδίαν αὐτῶν ἀπώλειαν. e St. James ii. 14--26. ᾿ 

[ LECT. 


‘ 


They exhibit destinct types of the one doctrine. 281 


trine is, at least, generally brought forward with a view to 
some immediate practical object. Only in five out of his four- 
teen Epistles can the doctrinal element be said very decidedly to 
predominate f, St. Paul assumes that his readers have gone 
through a course of oral instruction in necessary Christian doc- 
trine& ; he accordingly completes, he expands, he draws out into 
its consequences what had been already taught by himself or by 
others. St. Paul’s fiery and impetuous style is in keeping with 
his general relation, throughout his Epistles, to Christian dogma. 
The calm enunciation of an enchained series of consequences 
flowing from some central or supreme truth is perpetually in- 
terrupted, in St. Paul, by the exclamations, the questions, the 
parentheses, the anacoloutha, the quotations from liturgies, the 
solemn ascriptions of glory to the Source of all blessings, the 
outbursts by which argument suddenly melts into stern denun- 
ciation, or into versatile expostulation, or into irresistible appeals 
to sympathy, or into the highest sfrains of lyrical poetry. Thus 
it is that in St. Paul primary dogma appears, as it were, rather 
in flashes of light streaming with rapid coruscations across his 
pages, than in highly elaborated statements such as might 
abound throughout a professed doctrinal treatise of some later 
age; and yet doctrine, although it might seem to be introduced 
incidentally to some general or special purpose, nevertheless is 
inextricably bound up with the Apostle’s whole drift of practical 
thought. As for St. John, he is always a contemplative and 


f And yet in these five Epistles an immediate practical purpose is generally 
discernible. In the Romans the Apostle is harmonizing the Jewish and 
Gentile elements within the Catholic Church, by shewing that each section is 
equally indebted to faith in Jesus Christ for a real justification before God. 
In the Galatians he is opposing this same doctrinal truth to the destructive 
and reactionary theory of the Judaizers. In the Ephesians and Colossians 
he is meeting the mischievous pseudo-philosophy and Cabbalism of the ear- Ὁ 
liest Gnostics, here positively and devotionally, there polemically, by insist- 
ing on the dignity of our Lord’s Person, and the mystery of His relation to 
the Church. In the Hebrews, written either by St. Paul himself or by 
St. Luke under his direction, our Lord’s Person and Priesthood are exhibited 
in their several bearings as a practical reason against apostasy to Judaism (it 
would seem) of an Alexandrian type. 

δ τ Thess. iii. 10: νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ὑπὲρ ἐκ περισσοῦ δεόμενοι εἰς τὸ ἰδεῖν 
ὑμῶν τὸ πρόσωπον, καὶ καταρτίσαι τὰ ὑστερήματα τῆς πίστεως. ὑμῶν. The 
Apostle desires to see the Roman Christians, not that he may teach them any 
supplementary truths, but to confirm them in their existing belief (εἰς τὸ 
στηριχθῆναι ὑμᾶς, Rom.i. 11) by the interchange of spiritual sympathies with 
himself. See 1 Cor. xv. 1; Gal. i.. 11, 12, iv. 13, 14; 1 Thess. ii. 2; 
2 Thess. ii. 15. Compare 1 St. John ii. 21: od« ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, ὅτι οὐκ οἴδατε 
τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι οἴδατε αὐτήν. 

vi | 


282 St. Fames erroneously deemed Ebionitic. 


mystical theologian. The eye of his soul is fixed on God, and 
on the Word Incarnate. St. John simply describes his intui- 
tions. He does not argue; he asserts. He looks up to heaven, 
and as he gazes he tells us what he sees. He continually takes 
an intuition, as it were, to pieces, and recombines it ; he resists — 
forms of thought which contradict it ; but he does not engage 
in long arguments, as if he were a dialectician, defending or 
attacking a theological thesis. Nor is St. John’s temper any 
mere love of speculation divorced from practice. Each truth 
which the Apostle beholds, however unearthly and sublime, has 
a directly practical and transforming power; St. John knows 
nothing of realms of thought which leave the heart and con- 
science altogether untouched. Thus, speaking generally, the 
three Apostles respectively represent the moralist, the practical 
dogmatist, and the saintly mystic ; while St. Peter, as becomes 
the Apostle first in order in the sacred college, seems to blend 
in himself the three types of apostolical teachers. His Epistles 
are not without elements that more especially characterize 
St. John; while they harmonize in a very striking manner 
those features of St. Paul and St. James which seem most nearly 
to approach divergence. It may be added that St. Peter’s 
second Epistle finds its echo in St. Jude. 

I. 1. The marked reserve which is observable in St. James’ 
Epistle as to matters of doctrine, combined with his emphatic 
allusions to the social duties attaching to property and to class 
distinctions, have been taken to imply that this Epistle repre- 
sents what is assumed by some theories of development to have 
been the earliest form of Christianity. The earliest Christians 
are sometimes referred to, as having been, both in their Christ- 
ology and in their sociological doctrines, Ebionites. But St. 
James’ Epistle is so far from belonging to the teaching of the 
earliest apostolical age, that it presupposes nothing less than a 
very widespread and indirect effect of the distinctive teaching 
of St. Paul. St. Paul’s emphatic teaching respecting faith as the 
receptive cause of justification must have been promulgated long 
enough and widely enough to have been perverted into a parti- 
cular gnosis of an immoral Antinomian type. With that gnosis — 
St. James enters into earnest conflict. Baur indeed maintains 
that St. James is engaged in a vehement onslaught upon the 
actual teaching, upon the ipsissima verba, of St. Paul himself», 


h Baur, Vorlesungen, iiber N. T. Theologie, p. 277: ‘In dem Brief 
Jacobi dagegen begegnet uns nun eine auf den Mittelpunkt der ae 
| LECT. 


flrs Epistle belongs to the later Apostohical age. 283 


Now even if you should adopt that paradox, you would still 
obviously be debarred from saying that St. James’ Epistle is a 
sample of the earliest Christianity, of the Christianity of the pre- 
Pauline age of the Churchi. But in point of fact, as Bishop Bull 
and others have long since shewn, St. James.is attacking an 
evil which, although it presupposes and is based upon St. Paul’s 
teaching, is as foreign to the mind of St. Paul as to his own. 
The justification by faith without works which is denounced by 
St. James is a corruption and a caricature of that sublime truth 
which is taught us by the author of the Epistles to the Romans 
and the Galatians. Correspondent to the general temper of mind 
which, in the later apostolical age, began to regard the truths of 
faith and morals only as an addition to the intellectual stock of 
human thinkers, there arose a conception of faith itself which de- 
graded it to the level of ‘mere barren consent on the part of the 
speculative faculty. This ‘faith’ had no necessary relations to 
holiness and moral growth, to sanctification of the affections, and 
subdual of the will. Thus, for the moment, error had imposed 
upon the sacred name of faith a sense which emptied it utterly of 
its religious value, and which St. Paul would have disavowed as 
vehemently as St. James. St. James denies that this mere con- 
sent of the intellect to a speculative position, carrying with it no 
necessary demands upon the heart and upon the will, can justify 


Lehre losgehende Opposition. Dem paulinischen Hauptsatz Rom. iii. 28: 
δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἀνθρώπον, χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου wird nun hier der Satz entge- 
gengestellt, Jac. ii. 24: ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος, καὶ od ἐκ πίστεως 
μόνον. Alle Versuche, die man gemacht hat, um der Anerkennung der 
Thatsache zu entgehen, dass ein directer Widerspruch zwischen diesen beiden 
Lehrbegriffen stattfinde und der Verfasser des Jacobusbriefs die paulinische 
Lehre zum unmittelbaren Gegenstand seiner Polemik mache, sind vdéllig ver- 
geblich.’ In his Christenthum (p.122) Baur speaks in a somewhat less 
peremptory sense. St. James ‘ bekimpft eine einseitige, fiir das praktische 
Christenthum nachtheilige Auffassung der paulinischen Lehre.’ 

- i Baur, Christenthum, p. 122: ‘Der Brief des Jacobus, wie unmiglich 
verkannt werden kann, die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre voraussetzt, so 
kann er auch nur eine antipaulinische, wenn auch nicht unmittelbar gegen 
den Apostel selbst gerichtete Tendenz haben.’ 

k Messmer, Erkl. des Jacobus-briefes, p. 38: ‘Der glaube ist bei Jacobus 
nichts anders als die Annahme, der Besitz oder auch das leere Bekenntniss 
der christlichen Wahrheiten (sowohl der Glaubens-als-Sitten-wahrheiten, ) 
Resultat des blossen Horens und eigentlich bloss in der Erkenntniss liegend. 

. Ein solcher Glaube kann fir sich, wie ein unfruchtbarer Keim, vdéllig 
_ wirkungslos fiir das Leben in Menschen liegen, oder auch in leeren Gefiihlen 
bestehen; er ist nichts als Namen-und-Scheinchristenthum, das keine Heilig- 
keit hervorbringt..... Das, was diesem Glauben erst die Seele einhaucht, 
ist die géttliche Liebe, durch welche der Wille und alle Kriafte des Menschen 
7 Dienste des Glaubens gefangen genommen werden.’ 
VI 


284 St. James teaching on justification 


a man before God. But when St. Paul speaks of justifying 
faith, he means an act of the soul, simple indeed at the moment 
and in the process of its living action, but complex in its real 
nature, and profound and far-reaching in its moral effect. The 
eye of the soul is opened upon the Redeemer: it believes. But 
in this act of living belief, not the intellect alone, but in reality, 
although imperceptibly, the whole soul, with all its powers of 
love and resolution, goes forth to meet its Saviour. This is 
St. Paul’s meaning when he insists upon justifying faith as being 
πίστις δ ἀγάπης évepyovpern!, Faith, according to St. Paul, 
when once it lives in the soul, is all Christian practice in the 
germ. The living apprehension of the Crucified One, whereby 
the soul attains light and liberty, may be separable in idea, 
but in fact it is inseparable from a Christian life. If the 
apprehension of revealed truth does not carry within itself the 
secret will to yield the whole being to God’s quickening grace 
and guidance, it is spiritually worthless, according to St. Paul. 
St. Paul goes so far as to tell the Corinthians, that even a faith 
which was gifted with the power of performing stupendous 
miracles, if it had not charity, would profit nothing™. Thus 
between St. Paul and St. James there is no real opposition. 
When St. James speaks of a faith that cannot justify, he means 
a barren intellectual consent to certain religious truths, a philo- 
sophizing temper, cold, thin, heartless, soulless, morally impo- 
tent, divorced from the spirit as from the fruits of charity. 
When St. Paul proclaims that we are justified by faith in Jesus 
Christ, he means a faith which only realizes its life by love, and 
which, if it did not love, would cease to live. When St. James 
contends that ‘by works a man is justified, and not by faith 
only,’ he implies that faith is the animating motive which gives 
to works their justifying power, or rather that works only 
justify as being the expression of a living faith. When St. Paul 
argues that a man is justified neither by the works of the Jewish 
law, nor by the works of natural morality, his argument shews 
that by a ‘ work’ he means a mere material result or product, a 
soulless act, unenlivened by the presence of that one supernatural 
motive which, springing from the grace of Christ, can be indeed 


: 1Gal. v. 6. . 

m 1 Cor. xiii. 2: ἐὰν ἔχω πᾶσαν τὴν πίστιν, ὥστε ὄρη μεθιστάνειν, ἀγάπην 
δὲ μὴ ἔχω, οὐδέν εἰμι. The γνῶσις of 1 Cor. viii. 1 seems to be substantially » 
identical with the bare πίστις denounced by St.James, although the former 
was probably of a more purely scientific and intellectual character. The 
ἀγάπη of 1 Cor. viii. 1 is really the πίστις δ ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη of "ἢ v. 6. 

LECT. 


presupposes the Christology of St. Paul. 285 


acceptable to a perfectly holy God. But if on the question of 
justification St. James’ position is in substance identical with 
that of St. Paul, yet St. James’ position, viewed historically, does 
undoubtedly presuppose not merely a wide reception of St. Paul’s 
teaching, but a perverse development of one particular side of it. 
In order to do justice to St. James, we have to contemplate first, 
the fruitless ‘faith’ of the Antinomian, with which the Apostle 
is immediately in conflict, and which he is denouncing ; next, 
the living faith of the Christian believer, as insisted upon by 
St. Paul, and subsequently caricatured by the Antinomian per- 
version ; lastly, the Object of the believer’s living faith, Whose 
Person and work are so prominent in St. Paul’s teaching. It is 
not too much to say that all this is in the mind of St. James. 
But there was no necessity for his insisting upon what was well 
understood ; he says only so much as is necessary for his imme- 
diate purpose. His Epistle is related to the Pauline Epistles in 
the general scheme of the New Testament, as an explanatory 
codicil might be to a will. The codicil does not the less repre- 
sent the mind of the testator because it is not drawn up by the 
same lawyer as the will itself. The codicil is rendered necessary 
by some particular liability to misconstruction, which has be- 
come patent since the time at which the will was drawn up. 
Accordingly the codicil defines the real intention of the testator; 
it guards that intention against the threatened misconstruction. 
But it does not repeat in detail all the provisions of the will, in 
order to protect the true sense of a single clause. Still less does 
it revoke any one of those provisions; it takes for granted the 
entire document to which it is appended. 

The elementary character of parts of the moral teaching of 
St. James is sometimes too easily assumed to imply that that 
Apostle must be held to represent the earliest stage of the sup- 
posed developments of apostolical Christianity. But is it not 
possible that in apostolical as well as in later times, ‘advanced’ 
Christians may have occasionally incurred the danger of forget- 
ting some important precepts even of natural morality, or of 
supposing that their devotion to particular truths or forms of 
thought, or that their experience of particular states of feeling, 
constituted a religious warrant for such forgetfulness? ? If this 


n After making reference to Luther’s designation of this Epistle as an 
‘ Epistle of straw,’ a modern French Protestant writer proceeds as follows : 
‘ Nous-mémes, nous ne pouvons considérer la doctrine de Jacques ni comme 
bien logique, ni comme suffisante ; nous y voyons la grande pensée de Jésus 
rétrécie et appauvrie par le principe légal du mosaisme. Le christianisme de 


vi | 


286 Moral truth the basis of dogmatic faith. 


was indeed the case, St. James’ Epistle is placed in its true light 
when we see in it a healthful appeal to that primal morality, 
which can never be ignored or slighted without the most certain 
risk to those revealed truths, such as our Lord’s plenary Satis- 
faction for sin, in which the enlightened conscience finds its final 
relief from the burden and misery of recognized guilt. If the 
sensitiveness of conscience be dulled or impaired, the doctrines 
which relieve the anguish of conscience will soon lose their 
power. St. Paul himself is perpetually insisting upon the nature 
and claims of Christian virtue, and on the misery and certain 
consequences of wilful sin. St. James, as the master both of 
natural and of Christian ethics, is in truth reinforcing St. Paul, 
the herald and exponent of the doctrines of redemption and 
justification. Thus St. James’ moral teaching generally, not less 
than his special polemical discussion of the question of justifica- 
tion, appears to presuppose St. Paul. It presupposes St. Paul 
as we know him now in his glorious Epistles, enjoining the 
purest and loftiest Christian sanctity along with the most perfect 
acceptance by faith of the Person and work of the Divine 
Redeemer. But it also presupposes St. Paul, as Gnostics who — 
preceded Marcion had already misrepresented him, as the 
idealized sophist of the earliest Antinomian fancies, the sophist 
who had proclaimed a practical or avowed divorce between the 
sanctions of morality and the honour of Christ. There is at 
times a flavour of irony in St. James’ language, such as might 
force a passage for the voice of truth and love through the dense 
tangle of Antinomian self-delusions. St. James urges that to 
listen to Christian teaching without reducing it to practice is 
but the moral counterpart of a momentary listless glance in a 
polished mirror®; and that genuine devotion is to be really 
tested by such practical results as works of mercy done to the 
afflicted and the poor, and by conscientious efforts to secure the 
inward purity of an unworldly life P. 


Jacques n’était qu’& demi émancipé des entraves de la loi; c’était un degré 
inférieur du Christianisme, et qui ne contenait pas en germe tous les déve- 
loppements futurs de la vérité chrétienne. 1] est douteux que cette Epitre 
ait jamais converti personne.’ Premitres Transformations du Christianisme, 
par A. Coquerel fils. Paris, 1866. (p. 65.) 

ο St. James i. 23 : εἴ τις ἀκροατὴς λόγου ἐστὶ καὶ οὗ ποιητὴς, οὗτος ἔοικεν 
ἀνδρὶ κατανοοῦντι τὸ πρόσωπον τῆς γενέσεως αὑτοῦ ἐν ἐσόπτρῳ κατενόησε γὰρ 
ἑαυτὸν, καὶ ἀπελήλυθε, καὶ εὐθέως ἐπελάθετο ὁποῖος ἦν. 

P Ibid. ver. 27: θρησκεία καθαρὰ καὶ ἀμίαντος παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ καὶ Πατρὶ αὕτη 
ἐστὶν, ἐπισκέπτεσθαι ὀρφανοὺς καὶ χήρας ἐν τῇ θλίψει αὐτῶν, ἄσπιλον ἑαυτὸν 
τηρεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου. Υ̓ 

| LECT. 


he 
Υ R 


Christianity considered as the New Law. 287 


2. In his earnest opposition to the Antinomian principle 
St. James insists upon the continuity of the New dispensation 
with the Old. Those indeed who do not believe the representa- 
tions of the great Apostles given us in the Acts to have been a 
romance of the second century, composed with a view to recon- 
ciling the imagined dissensions of the sub-apostolical Church, 
will not fail to note the significance of St. James’ attitude at the 
Council of Jerusalem. After referring to the prophecy of Amos 
as confirmatory of St. Peter’s teaching respecting the call of the 
Gentiles, St. James advises that no attempt should be made to 
impose the Jewish law generally upon the Gentile converts 4. 
Four points of observance were to be insisted on, for reasons of 
very various kinds’; but the general tenor of the speech proves 
how radically the Apostle had broken with Judaism as a living 
system. Yet in his Epistle the real continuity of the Law and 
the Gospel is undeniably prominent. Considering Christianity 
as a rule οὗ life based uponsa revealed creed, St. James terms it 
also a Law. But the Christian Law is no mere reproduction of 
the Sinaitic. The New Law of Christendom is distinguished by 
epithets which define its essential superiority to the law of the 
synagogue, and which moreover indirectly suggest the true 
dignity of its Founder. The Christian law is the law of liberty 
—vépos τῆς ἐλευθερίας, To be really obeyed it must be obeyed 
in freedom. A slave cannot obey the Christian law, because it 
demands not merely the production of certain outward acts, but 
the living energy of inward motives, whose soul and essence is 
love. Only a son whom Christ has freed from slavery, and 
whose heart would rejoice, if so it might be, to anticipate or to 
go beyond his Father’s Will, can offer that free service which is 
exacted by the law of liberty. That service secures to all his 
faculties their highest play and exercise; the Christian is most 
conscious of the buoyant sense of freedom when he is most 
eager to do the Will of his Heavenly Parent. The Christian law, 
which is the law of love, is further described as the royal law— 


a Acts xv. 14-19. t Ibid. ver. 20. 

5 St. J ames i. 25: 6 δὲ παρακύψας eis νόμον τέλειον τὸν τῆς ἐλευθερίας, καὶ 
παραμείνας, οὗτος οὐκ ἀκροατὴς ἐπιλησμονῆς γενόμενος, ἀλλὰ ποιητὴς ἔργου. — 
οὗτος μακάριος ἐν τῇ ποιήσει αὑτοῦ ἔσται. Ibid. ii. 12: οὕτω λαλεῖτε καὶ οὕτω 
ποιεῖτε, ὡς διὰ νόμου ἐλευθερίας μέλλοντες κρίνεσθαι. Messmer in 106. : 
‘ Gesetz der Freiheit, weil es nicht mehr ein bloss aiisserliches knechtendes 
Gebot ist, wie das alte Gesetz, sondern mit dem innerlich umgewandelten 
Willen uebereinstimmt, wir also nicht mehr aus Zwang, sondern mit freier 
Liebe dasselbe erfiillen.’ 

vi | 


288 Christianity both a Law and a Doctrine. 


νόμος βασιλικόςῖ, Not merely because the law of love is specifi- 
cally the first of laws, higher than and inclusive of all other 
-laws"; but because Christ, the King of Christians, prescribes 
this law to Christian love. To obey is to own Christ’s legislative 
supremacy. Once more, the Christian law is the perfect law— 
νόμος τέλειος, It is above human criticism. It will not, like 
the Mosaic law, be completed by another revelation. It can 
admit of no possible improvement. It exhibits the whole Will 
of the unerring Legislator respecting man in his earthly state. 
It guarantees to man absolute correspondence with the true idea 
of his life, in other words, his perfection ; if only he will obey it. 
In a like spirit St. James speaks of Christian doctrine as the 
word of truth—Adyos ddnéeiasY. Christian doctrine is the abso- 
lute truth; and it has an effective regenerating force in the 
spiritual world, which corresponds to that of-God’s creative 
word in the region of physical nature. But Christian doctrine is 
also the engrafted word—Adyos ἔμφυτος 2, It is capable of being 
taken up into, and livingly united with, the life of human souls. 
It will thus bud forth into moral foliage and fruits which, | 


t St. James ii. 8: εἰ μέντοι νόμον τελεῖτε βασιλικὸν, κατὰ τὴν γραφὴν, 
᾿Αγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτὸν, καλῶς ποιεῖτε. This compendium of 
the Christian’s whole duty towards his neighbour, as enjoined by our Blessed 
Lord (St. Matt. xxii. 39; St. Mark xii. 31), is not a mere republication of 
the Mosaic precept (Lev. xix. 18). In the latter the ‘neighbour’ is appa- 
rently ‘one of the children of thy people ;’ in the former it includes any 
member of the human family, since it embraced even those against whom the 
Jew had the strongest religious prepossessions. (St. Luke x. 29, sqq.) This 
injunction of a love of man as man, according to the measure of each man’s 
love of self, is the law of the true King of humanity, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

" Rom. xiii. 9. x St. James i. 25. 

Υ St. James i. 18: βουληθεὶς ἀπεκύησεν ἡμᾶς λόγῳ ἀληθείας, eis τὸ εἶναι 
ἡμᾶς ἀπαρχήν τινα τῶν αὑτοῦ κτισμάτων. ἀποκύειν is elsewhere used of the 
female parent. Hence it indicates the tenderness of the Divine love, as 
shewn in the new birth of souls ; just as βουληθείς points to the freedom of 
the grace which regenerates them, and ἀπαρχήν τινα τῶν κτισμάτων to the 
end and purpose of their regeneration. Compare St. John i. 12,13: ὅσοι δὲ 
ἔλαβον αὐτὸν .. ἐκ Θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν. 

z St. James i. 21: ἐν πρᾳὕτητι δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον, τὸν δυνάμενον 
σῶσαι τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν. Messmer in loc.: ‘ Die Offenbarung heisst hier das 
eingepflanzte, eingewachsene Wort; namlich bei der Wiedergeburt durch die 
christliche Lehre eingepflanzt. Wenn nun von einem Aufnehmen der ein- 
gepflanzten Lehre die Rede ist, so ist das natiirlich nicht die erste Aufnahme, 
sondern vielmehr das immer innigere Insichhineinnehmen und Aneignen der- 
selben und das Sichhineinleben in dieselbe.’ See too Dean Alford in loc. : 
‘The Word whose attribute and ἀρετή it is to be ἔμφυτος, and which is 
ἔμφυτος, awaiting your reception of it, to spring up and take up your being 
into it and make you new plants,’ 


[ LECT. 


ΡΥ ΣΙΝ tae 


St.Fames direct references toour Blessed Lord. 289 


without it, human souls are utterly incapable of yielding. This 
λόγος is clearly not the mere texture of the language in which 
the faith is taught. It is not the bare thought of the believer 
moulded into conformity with the ideas suggested by the lan- 
guage. It is the very substance and core of the doctrine ; it is 
He in Whom the doctrine centres ; it is the Person of Jesus 
Christ Himself, Whose Humanity is the Sprout, Shoot, or 
Branch of Judah, engrafted by His Incarnation upon the old 
stock of humanity, and sacramentally engrafted upon all living 
Christian souls, Is not St. James here in fundamental agree- 
ment not merely with St. Paul, but with St.John? St. James’ 
picture of the new law of Christendom harmonizes with St. Paul’s 
teaching, that the old law of Judaism without the grace of 
Christ does but rouse a sense of sin which it cannot satisfy, and 
that therefore the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has 
made Christians free from the law of sin and death, St. James’ 
doctrine of the Engrafted Word is a compendium of the first, 
third, and sixth chapters of St. John’s Gospel; the word written 
or preached does but unveil to the soul the Word Incarnate, the 
Word Who can give a new life to human nature, because He is 
Himself the Source of Life. 

It is in correspondence with these currents of doctrine that 
St. James, although our Lord’s own first cousin», opens his 
Epistle by representing himself as standing in the same relation 
to Jesus Christ as to God. He is the slave of God and of our 
Lord Jesus Christ®. In like manner, throughout his Epistle, 
he appears to apply the word Κύριος to the God of the Old 
Testament and to Jesus Christ, quite indifferently. Especially 
noteworthy is his assertion that the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Judge of men, is not the delegated representative of an absent 
Majesty, but is Himself the Legislator enforcing His own laws. 
The Lawgiver, he says, is One Being with the Judge Who can. 


® Baur admits that ‘dem Verfasser des Briefs auch die paulinische Verin- 
nerlichung des Gesetzes nicht fremd, indem er nicht blos das Gebot der Liebe 
als konigliches Gesetz bezeichnet, sondern auch von einem Gesetze der Frei- | 
heit spricht, zu welchem ihm das Gesetz nur dadurch geworden sein kann, 
dass er, der Aeusserlichkeit des Gesetzes gegeniiber sich innerlich ebenso frei 
von ihm wusste, wie der Apostel Paulus von seinem Standpunkt aus.’ 
Christenthum, p. 122. 

b Comp. St. Matt. xxvii. 56, St. Mark xv. 40, with St. John xix. 25. See 
Pearson on Creed, Art. iii. ; Mill on Myth. Int. p. 226; Bp. Ellicott, Huls. 
Lect. pp. 97, 354. 

© St. James i, 1: Ἰάκωβος Θεοῦ καὶ Κυρίου ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ δοῦλος. 

vi | U 


2.90 Reverential reserve of St. Fames. 


save and can destroy® ; the Son of man, coming in the clouds of 
heaven, has enacted the law which He thus administers. With 
a reverence which is as practical as his teaching is suggestive, 
St. James in this one short Epistle reproduces more of the 
words spoken by Jesus Christ our Lord than are to be found in 
all the other Epistles of the New Testament taken together f, 
He hints that all social barriers between man and man are as 
nothing when we place mere human eminence in the light of 
Christ’s majestic Person ; and when he names the faith of Jesus 
Christ, he terms it with solemn emphasis the ‘ faith of the Lord 
of Glory,’ thus adopting one of the most magnificent of St. Paul’s 
expressions £, and attributing to our Lord a Majesty altogether — 
above this human world). In short, St. James’ recognition of 
the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity is just what we might expect 
it to be if we take into account the mainly practical scope of 
his Epistle. Our Lord’s Divinity is never once formally proposed 
as a doctrine of the faith ; but it is largely, although indirectly, 
implied. It is implied in language which would be exaggerated 
and overstrained on any other supposition. It is implied in a 
reserve which may be felt to mean at least as much as the most 
demonstrative protestations. A few passing expressions of the 
lowliest reverence disclose the great doctrine of the Church 
respecting the Person of her Lord, throned in the background of 
the Apostle’s thought. And if the immediate interests of his 
ministry oblige St. James to confine himself to considerations 
which do not lead him more fully to exhibit the doctrine, we are 


e St. James iv. 12: εἷς ἐστιν 6 νομοθέτης καὶ κριτὴς 6 δυνάμενος σῶσαι καὶ 
ἀπολέσαι. (καὶ κριτής is omitted by text recept., inserted by A. B.x.) So 
De Wette: ‘ Hiner ist der Gesetzgeber und Richter, der da vermag zu retten 
und zu verderben.’ Cf. Alford in loc., who quotes this. 

{ The following are his references to the Sermon on the Mount. St. James 
i. 2; St. Matt. v. to-12. St. James i. 4; St. Matt. v. 48. St. Jamesi. 5; 
St. Matt. vii. 7. St. James i.g; St. Matt. v. 3. St.James i. 20; St. Matt. 
v.22. St. James ii. 13 ; St. Matt. vi. 14,15, v. 7. St. James ii. 14 sqq.; 
St. Matt. vii. 21 sqq. St. James iii. 17, 18; St. Matt. ν. 9. St. James iv. 4; 
St. Matt. vi. 24. St. James iv. 10; St. Matt. v. 3, 4. St. James iv. 11 ; 
St. Matt. vii. 1 sqq. St. James v. 2; St. Matt. vi. 19. St. James v. 10; 
St. Matt. v.12. St.James v. 12; St. Matt. v. 33 sqq. And for other dis- 
courses of our Lord: St. James i. 14; St. Matt. xv. 19. St. James iv. 12 ; 
St. Matt. x. 28. Again, St. James v. 1-6; St. Luke vi. 24 sqq. See reff. ; 
and Alford, vol. iv. p. 107, note. 1 Cor. ii. 8. 

h St. James ii. 1: ἀδελφοί μου, μὴ ἐν προσωποληψίαις ἔχετε τὴν πίστιν τοῦ 
Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τῆς δόξης. Here τῆς δόξης must be regarded as 
a second genitive governed by Κυρίου. Or, as Dean Alford suggests, it may 
be an epithetal genitive, such as constantly follows the mention of the Divine 
Name. 

7 [ LECT. 


Missionary Sermons of St. Peter. 201 


not allowed, as we read him, to forget the love and awe which 
veil and treasure it, so tenderly and so reverently, 1 in the inmost 
sanctuary of his illuminated soul. 

II. Of St. Peter’s recorded teaching there are two distinct 
stages in the New Testament. The first is represented by his 
missionary sermons in the Acts of the Apostles ; the second by 
his general Epistles. 

1. Although Jesus Christ is always the central Subject in the 
sermons of. this Apostle, yet the distinctness with which he 
exhibits our Lord in the glory of His Divine Nature seems to 
vary with the varying capacity for receiving truth on the part 
of his audience. Like Jesus Christ Himself, St. Peter teaches as 
men are able to bear his doctrine; he does not cast pearls before 
swine. In his missionary sermons he is addressing persons who 
were believers in the Jewish dispensation, and who were also 
our Lord’s contemporaries. Accordingly, his sermons contain a 
double appeal; first, to the known facts of our Lord’s Life and 
Death, and above all, of His Resurrection from the dead; and 
secondly, to the correspondence of these facts with the predictions 
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Like St. James, St. Peter lays 
especial stress on the continuity subsisting between Judaism and 
the Gospel. But while St. James insists upon the moral element 
of that connexion, St. Peter addresses himself rather to the pro- 
phetical. Even before the Day of Pentecost, St. Peter points 
to the Psalter as foreshadowing the fall of Judasi. When 
preaching to the multitude which had just witnessed the Pente- 
costal gifts, St. Peter observes that these wonders ‘are merely a 
realization of the prediction of Joel respecting the last days ; 
and he argues elaborately that the language of David in the 
sixteenth Psalm could not have been fulfilled in the case of the 
prophet-king himself, still lying among his people in his 
honoured sepulchre, while it had been literally fulfilled by 
Jesus Christ!, Who had notoriously risen from the grave. In 
his sermon to the multitude after the healing of the lame man 
in the Porch of Solomon, St. Peter contends that the sufferings 
of Christ had been ‘shewed before’ on the part of the God of 
Israel by the mouth of all His prophets™, and that in Jesus 
Christ the prediction of Moses respecting a coming Prophet, to 
Whom the true Israel would yield an implicit obedience, had 
received its explanation™. When arraigned before the Council®, 


ma i mr “- 
i Acts i. 16,20. Cf. Ps. xli. 9, Ixix.25. * Acts ii. 14-21; Joel ii. 282%" 0 
1 Acts ii. 24-36. τὰ Tbid, iii, 18. a Se 
Ibid. iii. 22-24; Deut. xviii. 15, 18, 19. ° Acts i Cx)> wa 
αν 
vi | U 2 i 4 » afk 


292 Chrest the chief theme of Hebrew prophecy. 


the Apostle insists that Jesus is that true ‘Corner-stone’ of the 
temple of souls, which had been foretold both by Isaiah P, and by 
a later Psalmist4; and that although He had been set at nought 
by the builders of Israel, He was certainly exalted and honoured 
by God. In the instruction delivered to Cornelius before his 
baptism, St. Peter states that ‘all the prophets give witness’ to 
Jesus, ‘that through His Name, whosoever believeth on Him 
shall receive remission of sins'.’ And we seem to trace the 
influence of St. Peter, as the first great Christian expositor of 
prophecy, in the teaching of the deacons St. Stephen and 
St. Philip. St. Philip’s exposition of Christian doctrine to the 
Ethiopian eunuch was based upon Isaiah’s prediction of the - 
Passion’, St. Stephen’s argument before his judges was cut 
short by a violent interruption, while it was yet incomplete. 
But St. Stephen, like St. Peter, appeals to the prediction in 
Deuteronomy of the Prophet to Whom Israel would hearken ἵ, 
And the drift of the protomartyr’s address goes to shew, that 
the whole course of the history of Israel pointed to the advent 
of One Who should be greater than either the law or the temple, 
—of One in Whom Israel’s wonderful history would reach its 
natural climax,—of that ‘Just One’ Who in truth had already 
come, but Who, like prophets before Him, had been betrayed 
and murdered by a people, still as of old, ‘ stiffmecked and un- 
circumcised in heart and ears x.’ 

It is not too much to say that in the teaching of the earliest 
Church, as represented by the missionary discourses of St. Peter 
and the deacons, Jesus Christ is the very soul and end of Jewish 
prophecy. This of itself suggests an idea of His Person which 
rises high above any merely Humanitarian standard. St. Peter 
indeed places himself habitually at the point of view which 
would enable him to appeal to the actual ‘experience of the 
generation he was addressing. He begins with our Lord’s 
Humiliation, which men had witnessed, and then he proceeds to 
describe His Exaltation as the honour put by God upon His 
Human Nature. He speaks of our Lord’s Humanity with fearless 
plainnessY. The Man Christ Jesus is exhibited to the world as 


P Isa, xxviii. 16. 

a Ps, cxviii, 22. Our Lord Himself claimed the prophecy, St. Matt. 
xxi. 42. r Acts x. 43. 5. [bid. viii. 32-35. 

t Ibid. vii. 37. 2 Ibid. vi. 13. 5 Tbid. vii. 51-53. 

y Acts ii. 22: Ἰησοῦν τὸν Ναζωραῖον, ἄνδρα [not here the generic ἄνθρωπον 
ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀποδεδειγμένον εἰς ὑμᾶς δυνάμεσι καὶ τέρασι Kal σημείοις, οἷς 
ἐποίησε δι’ αὐτοῦ ὁ Θεὸς ἐν μέσῳ ὑμῶν. 

[ LECT. 


Christ's HumanLtfesuggestsHlis Higher Nature. 293 


a miracle-worker ; as Man, He is anointed with the Holy Ghost 
and with power2; as the true Servant of God, He is glorified by 
the God of the patriarchs®; He is raised from the dead by 
Divine Power»; He is made by God both Lord and Christ ¢ ; 
and He will be sent by the Lord at ‘the times of refreshing 4’ as 
the ordained Judge of quick and dead®. But this general repre- 
sentation of the Human Nature by Which Christ had entered 
into Jewish history, is interspersed with glimpses of His Divine 
Personality Itself, Which is veiled by His Manhood. Thus we 
find St. Peter in the porch of Solomon applying to our Lord a 
magnificent title, which at once carries our thoughts into the very 
heart of the distinctive Christology of St. John. Christ, although 
crucified and slain, is yet the Leader or Prince of life—Apynyos 
τῆς Cons’. That He should be held in bondage by the might of 
death was not possibles. The heavens must receive Him}, and 
He is now the Lord of all things!. It is He Who from His 
heavenly throne has poured out upon the earth the gifts of 
Pentecost *, His Name spoken on earth has a wonder-working 
power!; as unveiling His Nature and office, it is a symbol which 
faith reverently treasures, and by the might of which the ser- 
vants of God can relieve even physical suffering™. As a refuge 
for sinners the Name of Jesus stands alone; no other Name has 
been given under heaven whereby the one true salvation can be 
guaranteed to the sons of men®, Here St. Peter clearly implies 
that the religion of Jesus is the true, the universal, the absolute 


2 Acts x. 38. ® Thid. iii. 13. 
Ὁ Ibid. ii. 24, iii. 15, iv. 10, v. 31, xX. 40. ¢ Ibid. ii. 36. 
ἃ Thid. iii. 19, 20. 6 Ibid. x. 42. f Ibid. iii. 15. 


& Ibid. ii. 24: dv 6 Θεὸς ἀνέστησε, λύσας Tas Sivas τοῦ θανάτου, καθότι 
οὐκ ἦν δυνατὸν κρατεῖσθαι αὐτὸν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ. This ‘ impossibility’ depended 
not merely on the fact that prophecy had predicted Christ’s resurrection, but 
on the dignity of Christ’s Person, implied in the existence of any such pro- 
phecy respecting Him. 

h bid. iii. 21: ὃν δεῖ οὐρανὸν μὲν δέξασθαι ἄχρι χρόνων ἀποκαταστάσεως 
πάντων. 

i Tbhid. x. 36 : οὗτός ἐστι πάντων Κύριος. 

k [bid. ii. 33: ἐξέχεε τοῦτο ὃ νῦν ὑμεῖς βλέπετε καὶ ἀκούετε. 

: Ibid. ili, 6: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Ναζωραίου, ἔγειραι καὶ περι- 
πάτει. 

m hid. ver. 16: καὶ ἐπὶ τῇ πίστει τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ, τοῦτον ὃν θεωρεῖτε 
καὶ οἴδατε, ἐστερέωσε τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ. Ibid. iv. 10: γνωστὸν ἔστω πᾶσιν 
ὑμῖν καὶ παντὶ τῷ λαῷ Ἰσραὴλ, ὅτι ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Ναζωραίου, 
ὃν ὑμεῖς ἐσταυρώσατε, ὃν ὁ Οεὸς ἤγειρεν ex νεκρῶν, ἐν τούτῳ οὗτος παρέστηκεν 
ἐνώπιον ὑμῶν ὑγιής. 

Ὁ Ibid. iv. 12: οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ οὐδενὶ ἣ σωτηρία" οὔτε γὰρ ὄνομά ἐστιν 
28 ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις, ἐν @ δεῖ σωθῆναι ἡμᾶς. 

VI 


294 Christology of St. Peter's general Epistles. 


religion. This implication of itself suggests much beyond as to 
the true dignity of Christ’s Person. Is it conceivable that He 
Who is Himself the sum and substance of His religion, Whose 
Name has such power on earth, and Who wields the resources 
and is invested with the glories of heaven, is notwithstanding in 
the thought of His first apostles only a glorified man, or only a 
super-angelic intelligence? Do we not interpret these early dis- 
courses most naturally, when we bear in mind the measure of 
reticence which active missionary work always renders necessary, 
if truth is to win its way amidst prejudice and opposition? And 
will not this consideration alone enable us to do justice to those 
vivid glimpses of Christ’s Higher Nature, the fuller exhibition of 
Which is before us in the Apostle’s general Epistles ἢ 

2. In St. Peter’s general Epistles it is easy to trace the same 
mind as that which speaks to us in the earliest missionary ser- 
mons of the Acts. As addressed to Christian believers °, these 
Epistles exhibit Christian doctrine in its fulness, but incidentally 
to spiritual objects, and without the methodical completeness 
of an oral instruction. Christian doctrine is not propounded as 
@ new announcement: the writer takes it for granted as furnish- 
ing a series of motives, the force of which would be admitted by 
those who had already recognized the true majesty and propor- 
tions of the faith. St. Peter announces himself as the Apostle 
of Jesus Christ ; he is Christ’s slave as well as His Apostlep. In 
his Epistles, St. Peter lays the great stress on prophecy which is 
so observable in his missionary sermons. Thus, as in his speech 
before the Council, so in his first Epistle, he specially refers 4 to 
the prophecy of the Rejected Corner-stone, which our Lord had 
applied to Himself. But St. Peter’s general doctrine of our 
Lord’s relation to Hebrew prophecy should be more particularly 
noticed. In our day theories have been put forward on this 
subject which appear to represent the Hebrew prophetical Scrip- 
tures as little better than a large dictionary of quotations, to 
which the writers and preachers of the New Testament are said 
to have had recourse when they wished to illustrate their subject 
by some shadowy analogy, or by some vague semblance of a 
happy anticipation. St. Peter is as widely removed from this 


° 1 St. Pet. i. 1, 2: ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις διασπορᾶς, ..... κατὰ 
πρόγνωσιν Θεοῦ Πατρὸς, ἐν ἁγιασμῷ Πνεύματος, eis ὑπακοὴν καὶ ῥαντισμὸν 
αἵματος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 2 St. Ῥοί. 1. 1: τοῖς ἰσότιμον ὑμῖν λαχοῦσι πίστιν. 

P i St. Pet. i. 1: ἀπόστολος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 2 St. Pet. i. 1: δοῦλος 
καὶ ἀπόστολος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

4 1 St. Pet. ii. 6, Cf. Acts iv. 11; Isa. xxviii. 16; Ps. cxviii. 22. 

LECT. 


A Divine Christ implied in the Christian life. 295 


position, as it is possible to conceive. According to St. Peter, 
the prophets of the Old Testament did not only utter literal pre- 
dictions of the expected Christ, but in doing this they were 
Christ’s own servants, His heralds, His organs. He Who is the 
subject of the Gospel story, and the living Ruler of the Church, 
had also, by His Spirit, been Master and Teacher of the pro- 
phets. Under His guidance it was that they had foretold His 
sufferings. It was the Spirit of Christ Who was in the pro- 
phets, testifying beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the 
glories that would follow’. The prophets did not at first 
learn the full scope and meaning of the words they uttered 5, 
but they spoke glorious truths which the Church of Jesus 
understands and enjoys*. Thus the proclamation ef Christian 
doctrine is older than the Incarnation: Christianity strikes its 
roots far back into the past of ancient Israel. The pre-existent 
Christ, moulding the utterances of Israel’s prophets to proclaim 
their anticipations of His advent, had indeed reigned in the old 
theocracy ; and yet the privileged terms in which the members 
of God’s elder kingdom upon earth described their prerogatives 
were really applicable, in a deeper sense, to those who lived 
within the kingdom of the Divine Incarnation¥. Indeed, 
St. Peter’s language on the nature and privileges of the Chris- 
tian life is suggestive of the highest conception of Him Who is 
its Author and its Object. St. Peter speaks of conversion from 
Judaism or heathendom as the ‘being called out of darkness into 
God’s marvellous light *.’ It is the happiness of Christians to 
suffer and to be reviled for the Name of Christy. The Spirit of 


τα St. Pet. i. 11: τὸ ἐν αὐτοῖς Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ, mpouaptupduevov τὰ 
εἰς Χριστὸν παθήματα, καὶ τὰς μετὰ ταῦτα δόξας. Here Χριστοῦ is clearly 
a genitive of the subject. 

S Ibid. vers. 10, 11: περὶ ἧς σωτηρίας ἐξεζήτησαν καὶ ἐξηρεύνησαν 
προφῆται οἱ περὶ τῆς εἰς ὑμᾶς χάριτος προφητεύσαντες, ἐρευνῶντες εἰς τίνα 
ἢ ποῖον καιρὸν ἐδήλου τὸ ἐν αὐτοῖς Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ. Ibid. ver. 12: οἷς 
ἀπεκαλύφθη ὅτι οὐχ ἑαυτοῖς, ἡμῖν δὲ διηκόνουν αὐτὰ, ἃ νῦν ἀνηγγέλη ὑμῖν. 

ὁ 2 St. Pet. i. 20: πᾶσα προφητεία γραφῆς ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως οὐ γίνεται. 
The Spirit in the Church understands the Spirit speaking by the prophets. 

ur St. Pet. ii. 9, 10: ὑμεῖς δὲ γένος ἐκλεκτὸν, βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα, ἔθνος 
ἅγιον, λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν, ὅπως τὰς ἀρετὰς ἐξαγγείλητε τοῦ ἐκ σκότους ὑμᾶς 
καλέσαντος εἰς τὸ θαυμαστὸν αὑτοῦ φῶς" of ποτὲ οὐ λαὺς, νῦν δὲ λαὸς Θεοῦ" 
οἱ οὐκ ἠλεημένοι, νῦν δὲ ἐλεηθέντες. Ibid. ver. 5: ὧς λίθοι ζῶντες οἰκοδο- 
μεῖσθε, οἶκος πνευματικὸς, ἱεράτευμα ἅγιον, ἀνενέγκαι πνευματικὰς θυσίας 
εὐπροσδέκτους τῷ Θεῷ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. x Ubi supra. 

yi St. Pet. iv. 13; καθὸ Kowwvetre τοῖς τοῦ Χριστοῦ παθήμασι, χαίρετε, 
ἵνα καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀποκαλύψει τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ χαρῆτε ἀγαλλιώμενοι. Εἰ ὀνειδίζεσθε 
ἐν ὀνόματι Χριστοῦ, μακάριοι. 


vi] 


| 296 Dignity of Christ’s Person suggested by 


glory and of God rests upon them. The Spirit is blasphemed 
by the unbelieving world, but He is visibly honoured by the 
family of God’s children% It is the Person of Jesus in Whom 
the spiritual life of His Church centres®. The Christians whom 
St. Peter is addressing never saw Him in the days of His flesh ; 
they do not see Him now with the eye of'sense. But they love 
Him, invisible as He is, because they believe in Him. The eye 
of their faith does see Him. The Lord Christ is present in 
their hearts; they are to ‘sanctify’ Him there, as God was 
‘sanctified’ by the worship of Israel». They rejoice in this 
clear constant inward vision with a joy which language cannot 
describe, and which is radiant with the glory of the highest 
spiritual beauty. They are in possession of a spiritual sense ¢ 
whereby the goodness of Jesus may be even tasted ; and yet the 
truths on which their souls are fed are mysteries so profound as 
to rouse the keen but baffled wonder of the intelligences of hea- 
ven4, Such language appears to point irresistibly to the exist- 
ence of a supernatural religion with a superhuman Founder; 
unless we are to denude it of all spiritual meaning whatever, by 
saying that it only reflects the habitual exaggeration of Eastern 
fervour. Why is the intellectual atmosphere of the Church 
described as ‘marvellous light?’ Why is suffering for Jesus so 
much a matter for sincere self-congratulation? Why does the 
Divine Spirit rest so surely upon Christian confessors? Why is 
the Invisible Jesus the Object of such love, the Source of such 
inexpressible and glorious joy; if, after all, the religion of Jesus 
is merely a higher phase of human opinion and feeling, and His 
Church a human organization, and His Person only human, or 
at least not literally Divine? The language of St. Peter respect- 
ing the Christian life manifestly points to a Divine Christ. If 
the Christ of St. Peter had been the Christ, we will not say of 
a Strauss or of a Renan, but the Christ of a Socinus, nay, the 
Christ of an Arius, it is not easy to understand what should 

z 1 St. Pet. iv. 14: ὅτι τὸ τῆς δόξης καὶ τὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ Πνεῦμα ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ava- 
παύεται" κατὰ μὲν αὐτοὺς βλασφημεῖται, κατὰ δὲ ὑμᾶς δοξάζεται. 

ἃ Ibid. i. 7, 8: Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ" ὃν οὐκ εἰδότες ἀγαπᾶτε, εἰς ὃν ἄρτι μὴ 
ὁρῶντες, πιστεύοντες δὲ, ἀγαλλιᾶσθε χαρᾷ ἀνεκλαλήτῳ καὶ δεδοξασμένῃ. 

Ὁ Ibid. iii. 15: Κύριον δὲ τὸν Χριστὸν ἁγιάσατε ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν. 
That Χριστὸν and not Θεὸν is the true reading here, see Scrivener, Introduc- 
tion to Crit. N. T. p. 456. Compare Isaiah viii. 13. Isaiah is quoted again 
in I St. Pet. ii. 8. 

e Ibid. ii. 3: εἴπερ ἐγεύσασθε ὅτι χρηστὸς 6 Κύριος. Cf. Ps. xxxiv. 8. 
Cf. Heb. vi. 4: γευσαμένους τε τῆς δωρεᾶς τῆς ἐπουρανίου. There is possibly 
in both passages an indirect reference to sacramental communion. 


ἃ χ St. Pet. i. 12: εἰς ἃ ém9upovow ἄγγελοι παρακύψαι. 
[ LECT. 


ee ee ee a aly eye el ee _ | 


St. Peter’s references to the Passion. 297 


have moved the angels with that strong desire to bend from 
their thrones above, that they might gaze with unsuccessful 
intentness at the humiliations of a created being, their peer or 
their inferior in the scale of creation. Surely the Angels must 
be longing to unveil a transcendent mystery, or a series of mys- 
teries, such as are in fact the mystery of the Divine Incarnation 
and the consequences which depend on it in the kingdom of 
grace. St. Peter’s words are sober and truthful if read by the 
light of faith in an Incarnate God; divorced from such a faith, 
they are fanciful, inflated, exaggerated. 

St. Peter lays especial stress both on the moral significance 
and on the atoning power of the Death of Jesus Christ. Here 
he enters within that circle of truths which are taught most 
fully in the Epistle to the Hebrews; and his exhibition of the 
Passion might almost appear to presuppose the particular Christ- 
ological teaching of that Epistle. St. Peter says that ‘ Christ 
has once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might 
bring us to God®&.’ This vicarious suffering depended upon the 
fact that Jesus, when dying, impersonated sinful humanity. ‘He 
bare our sins in His own Body on the treef. Stricken by the 
anguish of His Passion, the dying Christ is the consummate 
Models for all Christian sufferers, in His innocence}, in His 
silence i, in His perfect resignation*. But also the souls of men, 
wounded by the shafts of sin, may be healed by the virtue of that 
sacred Pain!; and a special power to wash out the stains of moral 
guilt is expressly ascribed to the Redeemer’s Blood. The Chris- 
tian as such is predestined in the Eternal Counsels, not merely 
to submission to the Christian faith, but also to ‘a sprinkling of 
the Blood of Jesus Christ ™.’ The Apostle earnestly insists that 
it was no mere perishable earthly treasure, no silver or golden 
wares, whereby Christians had been bought out of their old 
bondage to the traditional errors and accustomed sins of Judaism 


e x St. Pet. iii. 18: Χριστὸς ἅπαξ περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἔπαθε, Δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, 
ἵνα ἡμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῷ Θεῷ. 

f Tbid. ii. 24 : ὃς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν ἐν τῷ σώματι αὑτοῦ 
ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον. ᾿ 

& Ibid. ver. 21: Χριστὸς ἔπαθεν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, ἡμῖν ὑπολιμπάνων ὑπογραμμὸν, 
ἵνα ἐπακολουθήσητε τοῖς ἴχνεσιν αὐτοῦ. 

h Ibid. ver. 22: ὃς ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ ἐποίησεν, οὐδὲ εὑρέθη δόλος ἐν τῷ στόματι 
αὐτοῦ. Isa. liii.g; 2 Cor. v. 21; 1 St. John iii. 5. 

ir St. Pet. ii. 23: ὃς λοιδορούμενος odk ἀντελοιδόρει, πάσχων οὐκ ἠπείλει. 
In the ἠπείλει there lies the consciousness of power. 

k Thid.: παρεδίδου δὲ τῷ κρίνοντι δικαίως. 

1 Tbid. ver. 24: οὗ τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοῦ ἰάθητε. 

Ἵ Ibid. i. 2: εἰς ὑπακοὴν καὶ ῥαντισμὸν αἵματος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 
VI 


298 St. Peter on the ever-living Word of Gon. 


or of heathendom. The mighty spell of moral and intellectual 
darkness had indeed been broken, but by no less a ransom than 
the Precious Blood of Christ, the Lamb without blemish and 
Immaculate». Are we to suppose that while using this burning 
language to extol the Precious Blood of redemption, St. Peter is 
recklessly following a rhetorical impulse, or that he is obscuring 
the moral meaning of the Passion, by dwelling upon its details 
in misleading language which savours too strongly of the sacri- 
ficial ritual of the temple? Is he not even echoing the Baptist°? 
Is he not in correspondence with his brother apostles? Is he not 
summarizing St. PaulP? Is he not anticipating St. John4? 
Certainly this earnest recognition of Christ’s true Humanity as 
the seat of His sufferings is a most essential feature of the Apo- 
stle’s doctrine’; but what is it that gives to Christ’s Human acts 
and sufferings such preterhuman value? Is it not that the truth 
of Christ’s Divine Personality underlies this entire description of 
His redemptive work, rescuing it from the exaggeration and 
turgidity with which it would be fairly chargeable, if Christ 
were merely human or less than God? That this is in fact the 
case is abundantly manifest; and indeed the Person of Christ 
appears to be hinted at in St. Peter’s Epistle, by the same august 
expression which has been noticed as common to St. James and 
to St. John. The Logos or Word of God, living and abid- 
ing for ever’, is the Author of the soul’s new birth ; and Christ 


n 1 St. Pet. i. 18, 19: εἰδότες ὅτι οὐ φθαρτοῖς, ἀργυρίῳ ἢ χρυσίῳ, ἐλυ- 
τρώθητε ἐκ τῆς ματαίας ὑμῶν ἀναστροφῆς πατροπαραδότου, ἀλλὰ τιμίῳ αἵματι 
ὡς &uvod ἀμώμου καὶ ἀσπίλου Χριστοῦ. 

© §t. John i. 29: We 6 ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὃ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου. 
It is impossible to doubt that the sacrificial rather than the moral ideas 
associated with the ‘Lamb’ are here in question. See Alford in loc. 

P Acts xx. 28: ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ 
τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος. τ Cor. v. 7: τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν ἐτύθη Χριστός. Heb. ix. 12: 
διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος εἰσῆλθεν ἐφάπαξ εἰς τὰ ἅγια, αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν εὑράμενος. 

ax St. John i. 7: τὸ αἷμα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ αὐτοῦ καθαρίζει ἡμᾶς 
ἀπὸ πάσης ἁμαρτίας. Rev.i. 5: τῷ ἀγαπήσαντι ἡμᾶς καὶ λούσαντι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ 
τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὑτοῦ. ... αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος 
cis τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. auhv. Ibid. v. 9: ἄξιος εἶ λαβεῖν τὸ βιβλίον, 
καὶ ἀνοῖξαι τὰς σφραγῖδας αὐτοῦ" ὅτι ἐσφάγης καὶ ἠγόρασας τῷ Θεῷ ἡμᾶς 
ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου. 

r St. Peter expressly alludes to our Lord’s Human Body (1 St. Pet. ii. 24, 
iii. 18, iv. 1), and to His Human Soul, after Its separation from the Body 
of Jesus on the cross, as descending to preach to the spirits in prison 
(Ibid. iii. 18). 

51 St. Pet. i. 23: ἀναγεγεννημένοι οὐκ ἐκ σπορᾶς φθαρτῆς, ἀλλὰ ἀφθάρτου, 
διὰ λόγου ζῶντος Θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. By understanding the 
λόγος here to mean only the written word, Baur maintains his ie 

LECT. 


The ‘higher knowledge’ of Fesus Christ. 299 


Jesus our Lord does not only bring us this Logos from heaven ; 
He is this Logos. And thus in His home of glory, angels and 
authorities and powers are made subject unto Him't; and He is 
not said to have been taken up into heaven, but to have gone 
up thither, as though by His own deed and will¥. And when 
St. Peter exhorts Christians to act in such a manner that God 
in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, he pauses 
reverently at this last most precious and sacred Name, to add, 
‘to Whom is the glory and the power unto ages beyond ages V.’ 
St. Peter’s second Epistle w, like his first, begins and ends 
with Jesus*. Its main positive theme is the importance of 
the higher practical knowledge Y of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ 5. Jesus is not set before Christians as a revered and 
departed Teacher whose words are to be gathered up and 
studied; He is set forth rather as an Invisible and Living Person 
Who is to be spiritually known by souls. Along with this 
practical knowledge of Jesus, as with knowledge of God, there 
will be an increase of grace, and of its resultant inward evidence, 
spiritual peace®. For this practical knowledge of Jesus is the 
crowning point of other Christian attainments». It is the 
consummate result both of faith and practice, both of the 
intellectual and of the moral sides of the Christian life. In 
the long line of-graces which this special knowledge implies, are 
faith and general religious knowledge on the one hand, and on 
the other, moral strength, self-restraint, patience, piety, brotherly 
love, and, in its broadest sense, charity®. In this higher know- 
ledge of Jesus, all these excellences find their end and their 
completion. On any other path, the soul is abandoned to 


that in St. Peter’s Epistles the written word is substituted for, and does 
the aT of, the Person of Christ in St. Paul’s writings. Vorlesungen, 
p- 296. 

τι St. Pet. iii. 22: ὑποταγέντων αὐτῷ ἀγγέλων καὶ ἐξουσιῶν καὶ δυνάμεων. 

ἃ Thid.: ὅς ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ Θεοῦ πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανόν. 

V Ibid. iv. 11: ἵνα ἐν πᾶσι δοξάζηται ὃ Θεὸς διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ᾧ 
ἐστιν ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. ἀμήν. 

w For an examination of the arguments which have been urged against 
the genuineness and authenticity of this Epistle, see Olshausen, Opuscula 
Theologica, pp. 1-88, and Canon Cook’s art. ‘ Peter,’ in Smith’s Dict. Bibl. 

x 2 St. Pet. i. 1, iii. 18. Υ ἐπίγνωσις. 

5 Ibid. i. 2, 3, 8, ii. 20, iii. 18. 

® Ibid. i. 2: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη ἐν ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ 
Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν. 

Ὁ Thid. ver. 8: ταῦτα γὰρ (that is, the eight graces previously enumerated) 
ὑμῖν ὑπάρχοντα καὶ πλεονάζοντα, οὐκ ἀργοὺς οὐδὲ ἀκάρπους καθίστησιν εἰς τὴν 
τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐπίγνωσιν. 

© ΤΟΙ, ἢν ‘5,6, 7. 

vi] 


cieuitemmaallli 


300 Characteristics of St. Peter's later Christology. 


spiritual blindness, tending more and more to utter forgetfulness 
of all past purifications from sind, For this higher practical 
knowledge of Jesus Christ is the means whereby Christians 
escape from the polluting impurities of the life of the heathen 
world?. It raises Christian souls towards the Unseen King in 
His glory ; it secures their admission to His everlasting realm‘, 
If Christians would not be carried away from their stedfast 
adherence to the truth and life of Christianity by the errors of 
those who hate all law, let them endeavour to grow in this 
blessed .knowledge of Jesus. The prominence given to the 
Person of Christ, in this doctrine of an ἐπίγνωσις of which His 
Person is the Object, leads us up to the truth of His real Di- 
vinity. If Jesus, thus known and loved, were not accounted 
God, then we must say that God is in this Epistle thrown 
utterly into the background, and that His human messenger 
has taken His place. 

Nor is the negative and polemical side of the Epistle much 
-less significant than its constructive and hortatory side. The 
special misery of the false teachers of whom the Apostle speaks 
as likely to afflict the Church, will consist in their ‘denying the 
Sovereign that bought them, and so bringing on themselves 
swift destruction! Unbelievers might contend that the apo- 
stolical teachings respecting the present power and future coming 
of Jesus were cleverly-invented mythsi; but St. Peter had 
himself witnessed the majesty of Jesus in His Transfiguration J. 
The Apostle knows that he himself will quickly die; he has 
had a special revelation from the Lord Jesus to this effect *, 


ἃ 2 St. Pet. i. 9. 

e Ibid. ii. 20: ἀποφυγόντες τὰ μιάσματα Tod κόσμου ἐν ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ 
Κυρίου καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. Ibid. i. 4: ἀποφυγόντες τῆς ἐν 
κόσμῳ ἐν ἐπιθυμίᾳ φθορᾶς. 

f Ibid. i. 11: οὕτω γὰρ πλουσίως ἐπιχορηγηθήσεται ὑμῖν h εἴσοδος εἰς τὴν 
αἰώνιον βασιλείαν τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

g Ibid. iii, 17,18: φυλάσσεσθε, ἵνα μὴ τῇ τῶν ἀθέσμων πλάνῃ συναπαχθέν- 
τες, ἐκπέσητε τοῦ ἰδίου στηριγμοῦ" αὐξάνετε δὲ ἐν χάριτι καὶ γνώσει τοῦ 
Κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

h [bid. ii. 1: παρεισάξουσιν αἱρέσεις ἀπωλείας, καὶ τὸν ἀγοράσαντα αὐτοὺς 
Δεσπότην ἀρνούμενοι, ἐπάγοντες ἑαυτοῖς ταχινὴν ἀπώλειαν. 

i Ibid. i. 16: οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις ἐξακολουθήσαντες ἐγνωρίσαμεν 
ὑμῖν τὴν τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δύναμιν καὶ παρουσίαν. 

i Ibid.: ἐπόπται γενηθέντες τῆς ἐκείνου μεγαλειότητος. Ibid. ver. 18: ἐν 
τῷ ὄρει τῷ ἁγίῳ. ᾿ 

k Tbid. ver. 14: εἰδὼς ὅτι ταχινή ἐστιν ἣ ἀπόθεσις τοῦ σκηνώματός μου, 
καθὼς καὶ 6 Κύριος ἡμῶν ᾿Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ἐδήλωσέ μοι. Here ταχινὴ seems to 
mean ‘soon,’ ‘not distant,’ rather than ‘rapid.’ Cf. St.John xxi. rt but 

LECT. 


τ- 


ΠΥ ΡΥ ee εν - 


Christology of St. Fude. | 801 


Throughout this Epistle the Person of Jesus is constantly before 
us. As He is the true Object of Christian knowledge, so He is 
the Lord of the future kingdom of the saints. He is mocked at 
and denied by the heretics; His Coming it is which the scoffing 
materialism of the age derides; His judgments are foreshadowed 
by the great destructive woes of the Old Testament, Again 
and again, as if with a reverent eagerness which takes pleasure 
in the sacred words, the Apostle names his Master’s Name and 
titles. He is Jesus our Lord!; He is our Lord Jesus Christ™; 
He is the Lord and Saviour"; He is our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ ° ; He is our God and Saviour Jesus Christ?. His 
power is spoken of as Divine4; and through the precious things 
promised by Him to His Church (must we not here specially 
understand the sacraments?) Christians are made partakers of 
the Nature of God". To Christ, in His exalted majesty, a 
tribute of glory is due, both now and unto the day of eternity 5. 
Throughout this Epistle Jesus Christ is constantly named where 
we should expect to find the Name of God. The Apostle does 
not merely proclaim the Divinity of Jesus in formal terms ; he 
everywhere feels and implies it. 

III. Akin to St. Peter’s second Epistle in its language and 
purpose is the short Epistle of St. Jude. Like his brother 
St. James, St. Jude, although our Lord’s first cousin, introduces 
himself as the slave of Jesus Christ. St. Jude does not also 
term himself the slave of Godt. If believing Christians are 
sanctified in God the Father, they are preserved in a life of 
faith and holiness by union with Jesus Christ". The religion 
of Jesus, according to St. Jude, is the final revelation of God, 
the absolute truth, the true faith. Men should spare no efforts 


some independent revelation, made shortly before these words were written, 
is probably alluded to. Hegesippus, de Excidio Hierosol. lib. iii. 2 ; St. Am- 
bros. Serm. contra Auxentium, de Basilicis tradendis, n. 13 in Epist. 21, 

1 2 St. Pet.i. 2. This occurs elsewhere only at Rom. iv. 24. 

m 2 St. Pet. i. 14, 16. n [bid. iii. 2. ο Ibid. i. 11, 1]. 20, iii. 18, 

P Ibid. i. 1. Cf. Bp. Middleton on Gr. Art. p. 433. 

4 Ibid. i. 3: τῆς θείας δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ τὰ πρὸς ζωὴν καὶ εὐσέβειαν δεδωρη- 
μένης. αὐτοῦ apparently refers to ᾿Ἰησοῦ (ver. 2), and is so distinguished from 
the Eternal Father τοῦ καλέσαντος ἡμᾶς (ver. 3). 

τ Ibid. ver. 4: τίμια ἐπαγγέλματα δεδώρηται, ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας 
κοινωνοὶ φύσεως. 

8 [bid. iii. 18 : αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ νῦν καὶ εἰς ἡμέραν αἰῶνος. ‘Tota eternitas 
una dies est.’ Estius. 

t St. Jude ver. 1: Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δοῦλος, ἀδελφὸς δὲ ᾿Ιακώβου. 

" Ibid.; τοῖς ἐν Θεῷ πατρὶ ἡγιασμένοις καὶ ᾿Ιἡσοῦ Χριστῷ τετηρημένοιϑ 
κλητοῖς. : 

vi |} 


302 Christology of St. Paul. 


on behalf of the true faith. It is the faith once for all delivered 
to the saints*. The Gnostics alluded to in this Epistle, like 
those foretold by St. Peter, are said to ‘deny our only Sovereign 
and Lord, Jesus Christ y.’ They are threatened with the punish- 
ments awarded to unbelieving Israel in the wilderness, to the 
rebel angels, to Sodom and Gomorrha% The Book of Enoch 
is cited to describe Jesus coming to the universal judgment, 
surrounded by myriads of saints*. The authors of all unholy 
deeds will then be convicted of their crimes; the hard things 
spoken against the Judge by impious sinners will be duly 
punished. Christians, however, are to build themselves up upon 
their most holy faith»: their life is fashioned in devotion to 
the Blessed Trinity. It is a life of prayer: their souls live in 
the Holy Spirit as in an atmosphere®. It is a life of persevering 
love, whereof the Almighty Father is the Object 4. It is a life 
of expectation: they look forward to the indulgent mercy which 
our Lord Jesus Christ will shew them at His coming®. Christ 
is the Being to Whom they look for mercy; and the issue of 
His compassion is everlasting life. Could any merely human 
Christ have had this place in the heart and faith of Christians, 
or on the judgment-seat of God 4 

IV. But it is time that we should proceed to consider, how- 
ever briefly, the witness of that great Apostle, whose Epistles 
form so much larger a contribution to the sacred volume of the 
New Testament than is supplied by any other among the inspired 
servants of Christ. 

1. In comparing St. Paul with St. John, a modern author has 
remarked that at first sight two objects stand out prominently 
in the theological teaching of the beloved disciple, while three 
immediately challenge observation in the writings of the Apostle 
of the Gentiles. At first sight, St. John’s doctrine appears to 
place us face to face only with God and the human world. Christ 


x St. Jude ver. 3: παρακαλῶν ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι τῇ ἅπαξ παραδοθείσῃ τοῖς 
ἁγίοις πίστει. ἣ 

y Ibid. ver. 4: τὸν. μόνον Δεσπότην καὶ Κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν 
ἀρνούμενοι. z Ibid. vers. 5-7. 

@ Ibid. ver. 14: ἦλθε Κύριος ἐν μυριάσιν ἁγίαις αὐτοῦ, ποιῆσαι κρίσιν κατὰ 
πάντων. 

b Ibid. ver. 20: ὑμεῖς δὲ, ἀγαπητοὶ, τῇ ἁγιωτάτῃ ὑμῶν πίστει ἐποικοδο- 
μοῦντες ἑαυτούς. 

¢ ΤΌΙΪά. : ἐν Πνεύματι ᾿Αγίῳ προσευχόμενοι. 

ἃ Tbid. ver. 21: ἑαυτοὺς ἐν ἀγάπῃ Θεοῦ τῆρήσατε. 

© Ibid.: προσδεχόμενοι. τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς ζωὴν 
αἰώνιον. : : 
[ LECT. 


Ce ee ee ee 2  ΡΎ 


- 


765 distinctive form. Christ’s Manhood. 303 


as the Eternal Logos is in St. John plainly identical with God ; 
although when we contemplate the life of the Godhead He is dis- 
cerned to be personally distinct from the Father. But we cannot 
really understand St. John, and withal establish in our thought 
an essential separation between God and the Word Incarnate. 
Although Jesus is a manifestation of God’s glory in the world 
of sense, He is ever internal to that Divine Essence Whose glory 
He manifests ; He is with God, and He is God. In St. Paul, 
on the other hand, we are confronted more distinctly with three 
objects. These are, God, the human world, and between the 
two, Jesus Christ, Divine and Human, the One Mediator between 
God and man. Of course the prumd facie impression produced 
on the mind by the sacred writers is all that is here in question, 
and this impression is not to be confounded with their real 
relations to each other. The Christ of St.John is as truly 
Human as the Christ of St. Paul is literally Divine; St. John 
exhibits the Mediator not less truly than St. Paul, St. Paul the 
Divine Son of the Father not less truly than St. John. But the 
observation referred to enables us to do justice to the form of 
St. Paul’s Christology ; and we may well observe in his writings 
the prominence which is given to two truths which supply the 
foil, on this side and on that, to the doctrine of our Lord’s 
essential Godhead. 

(a) St. Paul insists with particular earnestness upon the truth 
of our Lord’s real Humanity. This truth is not impaired by 
such expressions as the ‘form of a servant f, the ‘fashion of a 
man &,’ the ‘likeness of sinful flesh }, which are employed either 
to describe Christ’s Humanity as a mode of being, or to hint at 
lts veiling a Higher Nature undiscerned by the senses of man, 
or to mark the point at which, by Its glorious inaccessibility to 
sin, It is in contrast with the nature of that frail and erring race 
to which It truly belongs.. Nor is our Lord’s Humanity con- 
ceived of as a phantom, when the Apostle has reached a point 
of spiritual growth at which the outward circumstances of Christ’s 
Life are wellnigh forgotten in an overmastering perception of 
His spiritual and Divine glory St. Paul speaks plainly of our 
Lord as being manifest in the flesh*; as possessing a Body of 


f Phil. ii. 7: μορφὴν δούλου. 

& Ibid. ver. 8: σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος. 

h Rom. viii. 3: ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας. 

i 2 Cor. v. 16: εἰ δὲ καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν κατὰ σάρκα Χριστὸν, ἀλλὰ νῦν οὐκ ἔτι 
γινώσκομεν. 
k 1 Tim. iii. 16: ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. 
VI | | 


~ 


304 St, Paul on our Lords Manhood. 


material flesh!; as being ‘made of a woman™;’ as being ‘ born 
of the seed of David according to the flesh2;’ as having drawn 
the substance of His Flesh from the race of Israel®, As a Jew, 
Jesus Christ was born under the yoke of the Law?P. His Hu- 
man Life was not merely one of self-denial4 and obedience ; it 
was pre-eminently a life of sharp suffering". The Apostle uses 
energetic expressions to describe our Lord’s real share in our 
physical human weakness§, as well as in those various forms 
of pain, mental and bodily, which He willed to undergo, and 
which reached their climax in the supreme agonies of the Pas- 
siont, If however Christ became obedient unto death, even the 
death of the cross", this, as is implied, was of His own free 
condescension ; and St. Paul dwells with rapture upon the glory 
of Christ’s risen Body, to which our bodies of humiliation will 
hereafter in their degrees, by His Almighty Power, be assimi- 
lated’, Upon two features of our Lord’s Sacred Humanity 
does St. Paul lay especial stress. First, Christ’s Manhood was 
clearly void of sin, both in Soul and Body ; and in this respect 
It was unlike any one member of the race to which It belonged *. 
This sinlessness, however, did but restore humanity ‘in Christ’ 
to its original type of perfection. Thus, secondly, Christ’s Man- 
hood is representative of the human race; it realizes the arche- 
typal idea of humanity in the Divine Mind. Christ, the Second 
Adam, according to St. Paul, stands in a relation to the regene- 
rate family of men analogous to that ancestral relationship in 
which the first Adam stands to all his natural descendants. But 
this correspondence is balanced by a contrast. In two great 


1 Col. i. 22. ἐν τῷ σώματι THs σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ. 

m Gal. iv. 4: γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικόξ. 

n Rom. i. 3: τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα. 

© Tbid. ix. 5: ἐξ ὧν 6 Χριστὺς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα. 

P Gal. iv. 4: γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον. 

a Rom. xv. 3: καὶ γὰρ 6 Χριστὸς οὐκ ἑαυτῷ ἤρεσεν. 

r Heb. v. 8: καίπερ ὧν vids, ἔμαθεν ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἔπαθε τὴν ὑπακοήν. 

5.2 Cor. xiii. 4: ἐσταυρώθη ἐξ ἀσθενείαΞ. 

t Ibid. 1. 5: τὰ παθήματα τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Phil. ili. 10: τὴν κοινωνίαν τῶν 
παθημάτων αὐτοῦ. Col. i. 24: τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

u Phil. ἢ. 8: ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, 
θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ. 

v Phil. iii. 21: ὃς μετασχηματίσει τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν, . .. + 
σύμμορφον τῷ σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν 
καὶ ὑποτάξαι ἑαυτῷ τὰ πάντα. 1 Cor. xv. 44: σῶμα πνευματικόν. 

x 2 Cor. v. 21: τὸν γὰρ μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν. 
Gal. ii. 17: ἄρα Χριστὸς ἁμαρτίας διάκονος; μὴ γένοιτο. Rom. viii. 3; ch 
Art. xv. | | | 

[ LECT. 


St. Paul on our Lord’s Manhood. 305 


passages St. Paul exhibits the contrast which exists between the 
Second Adam and the first Y. This contrast is physical, psycho- 
logical, moral, and historical. The body of the first Adam is 
corruptible and earthly ; the Body of the Second Adam is 
glorious and incorruptiblez. The first Adam enjoys natural 
life ; he is made a living soul. The Second Adam is a super- 
natural Being, capable of communicating His Higher Life to 
others ; He is a quickening Spirit*. The first Adam is a sinner, 
and his sin compromises the entire race which springs from 
him. The Second Adam sins not ; His Life is one mighty act 
of righteousness»; and they who are in living communion with 
Him share in this His righteousness®. The historical conse- 
quence of the action of the first Adam is death, the death of the 
body and of the soul. This consequence is transmitted to his 
descendants along with his other legacy of transmitted sin. 
The historical consequence of the action and suffering of the 
Second Adam is life; and communion with His living right- 
eouness is the gauge and assurance to His faithful disciples 
of a real exemption from the law of sin and death4. Such a 
contrast, you observe, might well suggest that the Second Adam, 
Representative of man’s race, its true Archetype, its Restorer 
and its Saviour, is Himself more than man. Certainly ; but 
nevertheless it is as Man that Christ is contrasted with our first 
parent; and it is in virtue of His Manhood that He is our 
Mediator, our Redeemer 8, our Saviour from Satan’s power, our 
Intercessor with the Father‘. Great stress indeed does St. Paul 


y Rom. v. 12-21; 1 Cor. xv. 45-49. 

z 1 Cor. xv. 41: ὃ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἐκ γῆ, χοϊκός" ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος 
[5 Κύριος], ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Οἷος ὃ χοϊκὸς, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ χοϊκοί" καὶ οἷος ὁ ἐπου- 
pavios, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ ἐπουράνιοι. 

a Tbid. ver. 45: ἐγένετο 6 πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ᾿Αδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν" 6 
ἐσχατος ᾿Αδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν. 

b δικαίωμα, Rom. v. 18. 

¢ Rom. v. 18, 19: ἄρα οὖν ὡς δι᾽ ἑνὸς παραπτώματος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, 
εἰς κατάκριμα: οὕτω καὶ δι’ ἑνὸς δικαιώματος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, εἰς 
δικαίωσιν ζωῆς. ὥσπερ γὰρ διὰ τῆς παρακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἁμαρτωλοὶ 
κατεστάθησαν οἱ πολλοὶ, οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῆς ὑπακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς δίκαιοι καταστα- 
θήσονται οἱ πολλοί. 

ἃ Thid. ver. 12: δι ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἢ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθε, καὶ 
διὰ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ὁ θάνατος. Ibid. ver. 17: εἰ γὰρ ἐν ἑνὶ [τῷ τοῦ ἑνὸς, text. 
rec.| παραπτώματι ὃ θάνατος ἐβασίλευσε διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς, πολλῷ μᾶλλον οἱ τὴν 
περισσείαν τῆς χάριτος καὶ τῆς δωρεᾶς τῆς δικαιοσύνης λαμβάνοντες, ἐν (ζωῇ 
βασιλεύσουσι διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. Ibid. ver. 21. 

€ 1 Tim. ii. 5,6: ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς, ὃ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ 
πάντων. 

f Heb. ii. 14: ἐπεὶ οὖν τὰ παιδία κεκοινώνηκε σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος, καὶ αὐτὸς 
γι] Χ 


306 Christ ἐς the Mediator as being truly Man. 


lay upon the Manhood of Christ as the instrument of His media- 
tion between earth and heaven, as the channel through which 
intellectual truth and moral strength descend from God into 
the souls of men, as the Exemplar wherein alone human nature 
has recovered its ideal beauty, as entering a sphere wherein the 
Sinless One could offer the perfect, world-representing sacrifice 
of a truly obedient Will. So earnestly and constantly does 
St. Paul’s thought dwell on our Lord’s mediating) Humanity, 
that to unrefiecting persons his language might at times appear 
to imply that Jesus Christ is personally an inferior being, ex- 
ternal to the Unity of the Divine Essence. Thus he tells the 
Corinthians that Christians have one Lord Jesus Christ as well 
as One Godg. Thus he reminds St. Timothy that there is One 
God and One Mediator between God and man, the Man 
Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for allh. Thus he 
looks forward to a day when the Son Himself also, meaning 
thereby Christ’s sacred Manhood, shall be subject to Him That 
put all things under Him, that God may be all in 411}, It is at 


παραπλησίως μετέσχε τῶν αὐτῶν, ἵνα διὰ τοῦ θανάτου καταργήσῃ τὸν τὸ κράτος 
ἔχοντα τοῦ θανάτου, τουτέστι, τὸν διάβολον, Ibid. v. 1. 

Ει Cor. viii. 6: εἷς Κύριος Ἰησυῦς Χριστός. Here however (1) Κύριος, as 
contrasted with Θεὸς, implies no necessary inferiority ; else we must say that 
the Father is not Κύριος ; cf. St. Chrys. de Incompr. Dei Nat. v. 2; while (2) 
the clause δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἡμεῖς 5 αὐτοῦ, which cannot be restricted to 
our Lord’s redemptive work without extreme exegetical arbitrariness, and 
which certainly refers to His creation of the universe, places Jesus Christ on 
a level with the Father. Compare the position of διὰ between ἐξ and εἰς, 
Rom. xi. 36; cf. Col. i. 16. Our Lord is here distinguished from the ‘One 
God,’ as being Human as well as Divine; cf. the relation of μεσίτης to Θεὸς 
in I Tim. ii. 5. Baur’s remarks on 1 Cor. viii. 6 (Vorlesungen, p. 193), 
which proceed upon the assumption that only four Epistles of St. Paul are 
extant, and therefore that Col. i. 16, 17 is nothing to the purpose, and which 
moreover endeavour to impose the plain redemptive reference of 2 Cor. v. 
17, 18 upon this passage, are so capricious as to shew very remarkably the 
strength and truth of the Catholic interpretation. | 

h y Tim. ii. 5,6: εἷς yap Θεὸς, εἷς καὶ μεσίτης Θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος 
Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς. 

i x Cor. xv. 28: ὅταν δὲ ὑποταγῇ αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα, τότε καὶ αὐτὸς 6 Tids 
ὑποταγήσεται τῷ ὑποτάξαντι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα, ἵνα ἢ 6 Θεὸς τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν. 
That our Lord’s Humanity is the subject οὗ ὑποταγήσεται is the opinion of 
St. Augustine (de Trin. i. c. 8), St. Jerome (adv. Pelag. i. 6), Theodoret (in 
loc.). If αὐτὸς 6 Tits means the Divine Son most naturally, the predicate 
Srotayhoera is an instance of communicatio idiomatum (cf. Acts xx. 28; 
1 Cor. ii. 8;°Rom. viii. 32; ix. 5 ; St. John iii. 13); since it can only apply 
to a created nature. A writer who believed our Lord to he literally God 
(Rom. ix. 5) could not have supposed that, at the end of His mediatorial 
reign as Man, a new relation would be introduced between the Persons of 
the Godhead. The subordination (κατὰ τάξιν) of the Son is an eternal fact 

[ LECT. 


St. Paul on the Divine Unity. ὦ 307 


east certain that no modern Humanitarian could recognise the 


literal reality of our Lord’s Humanity with more explicitness 
than did the Apostle who had never seen Him on earth, and to 
whom He had been manifested in visions which a Docetic en- 
thusiast might have taken as sufficient warrant for denying His 
actual participation in our flesh and blood ¥. 

(8) On the other hand, St. Paul is as strict a monotheist as 
any unconverted pupil of Gamaliel ; he does not merely retain 
his hold upon the primal truth of God’s inviolate Unity ; he is 
especially devoted to it. 

God is parted from the very highest forms of created life by 
a measureless interval, and yet the universe is a real reflection 
of His Naturel. The relation of the creatures to God is three- 
fold. Nothing exists which has not proceeded originally from 
God’s creative Hand. Nothing exists which is not upheld in 
being and perfected by God’s sustaining and working energy. 
Nothing exists which shall not at the last, whether mechanically 
or consciously, whether willingly or by a terrible constraint, sub- 
serve God’s high and resistless purpose. For as He is the 
Creator and Sustainer, so He is the One last End of all created 
existences. Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all 
things™, So absolute an idea of God excludes all that is local, 
transient, particular, finite. God’s supreme Unity is the truth 
which determines the universality of the Gospel; since the Gospel 


unveils and proclaims the One supreme, world-controlling God». 


in the inner Being of God. But the wisible subjection of His Humanity 
(with Which His Church is so organically united as to be called ‘ Christ’ 
1 Cor. xii. 12) to the supremacy of God will be realized at the close of the 
present dispensation. Against the attempt to infer from this passage an 
ἀποκατάστασις of men and devils, cf. Meyer in loc.: and against Pantheistic 
inferences from τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, cf. Julius Miiller, Lehre von ἃ. Siinde, i. 
p- 157, quoted ibid. 

k There seems, however, to be a distinction between such visions and 
trances as those of 2 Cor. xii. 1-4; Acts xvili. 9; xxii. 17, and the appearance 
of Jesus Christ at midday, at St. Paul’s conversion, Acts ix. 17. Of this 
last St. Paul appears to speak more especially in 1 Cor. ix. 1, and xv. 8. Cf. 
Macpherson on the Resurrection, p. 330. 

1 Rom. i. 29: τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ amd κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασι 
νοούμενα καθορᾶται. 

m [bid. xi. 36: ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα. ‘Alles ist 
aus Gott (Urgrund), in sofern Alles aus Gottes SchOpferkrafte hervorgegangen 
ist; durch Gott ( Vermittelungsgrund), in sofern nichts ohne Gottes Ver- 
mittelung (continuirliche Kinwirkung) existirt ; fiir Gott (teleologische Be- 
stimmung), in sofern Alles den Zwecken Gottes dient.’ Meyer in loc. 

2 Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 205: ‘ Auf dieser Auffassung der Idee Gottes 
beruht der Universalismus des Apostels, wie er diess in dem Satz ausspricht, 


VI | ΧῸΣ 


308 Ground of St. Paul’s judgment of Paganism. 


Hence the Apostle infers the deep misery of Paganism. The 
Pagan representation of Deity was ‘a lie’ by which this essential 
truth of God’s Being® was denied. The Pagans had forfeited 
that partial apprehension of the glory of the incorruptible God 
which the physical universe and the light of natural conscience 
_ placed within their reach. They had yielded to those instincts 
of creature-worship P which mere naturalism is ever prone to 
indulge. The Incarnation alone subdues these -instincts by 
consecrating them to the service of God Incarnate; while beyond 
the Church they perpetually threaten naturalistic systems with 
an utter and disastrous subjection to the empire of sense. When 
man then had fairly lost sight of the Unity and Spirituality of 
God, Paganism speedily allowed him to sink beneath a flood of 
nameless sensualities ; he had abandoned the Creator to become, 
in the most debased sense, the creature’s slave 4, 

At another time the Apostle’s thought rests for an instant 
upon the elegant but impure idolatries to which the imagination 
and the wealth of Greece had consecrated those beautiful temples 
which adorned the restored city of Corinth, ‘To us Christians,’ 
he fervently exclaims, ‘there is but one God, the Father; all 
things owe their existence to Him, and we live for His purposes 
and His glory".’ In after years, St. Paul is writing to a fellow- 
labourer for Christ, and he has in view some of those Gnostic 
imaginations which already proposed to link earth with heaven 
by a graduated hierarchy of /Zons, thus threatening the re- 
introduction either of virtual polytheism or of conscious creature- 
worship. Against this mischievous speculation the Apostle 
utters his protest; but it issues from his adoring soul upwards 


dass Gott sowohl der Heiden als der Juden Gott sei. Rom. ii. 11, iii. 29, 
x. 12. Das Christenthum ist selbst nichts anderes (it is this, but it is 
a great deal more) als die Aufhebung alles Particularistischen, damit die 
reine absolute Gottes-Idee in der Menschheit sich verwirkliche, oder in ihr 
zum Bewusstsein komme.’ The Pantheistic touch of the last phrase does 
not destroy the general truth of the observation. 

ο Rom. i. 25: μετήλλαξαν Thy ἀλήθειαν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν TH ψεύδει. 

p Ibid. vers. 18-253; especially 23: ἤλλαξαν τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἀφθάρτου 
Θεοῦ ἐν ὁμοιώματι εἰκόνος φθαρτοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πετεινῶν καὶ τετραπόδων 
καὶ ἑρπετῶν, K.T.A. 

a Ibid. ver. 24: παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὃ Θεὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῶν καρδιῶν 
αὐτῶν εἰς ἀκαθαρσίαν. Ibid. ver. 26: εἰς πάθη ἀτιμίας. Ibid. ver. 28: εἰς 
ἀδόκιμον νοῦν. See the whole context. 

r x Cor. viii. 5,6: καὶ γὰρ εἴπερ εἰσὶ λεγόμενοι θεοὶ, εἴτε ἐν οὐρανῷ, εἴτε 
ἐπὶ γῆς (the two spheres of polytheistic invention) ὥσπερ εἰσὶ θεοὶ πολλοὶ, 
καὶ κύριοι πολλοί: ἀλλ᾽ ἡμῖν εἷς Θεὸς 6 Πατὴρ, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἡμεῖς 
εἰς αὐτόν, 


[ LECT. . 


Bearing of his monothesm on his Christology. 309 


to the footstool of the One Supreme and Almighty Being in the 
richest and most glorious of the doxologies which occur in his 
Epistles. God is the King of the ages of the world; He is the 
imperishable, invisible, only wise Beings’. God is the Blessed 
and Only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords; He 
only has from Himself, and originally, immortality ; He dwells 
in the light which is inaccessible to creatures ; no man has seen 
Him; no man can see Him; let honour and power be for 
ever ascribed to Him t. 
St. Paul is, beyond all question, an earnest monotheist ; his faith 
is sensitively jealous on behalf of the supremacy and the rights 
of God. What then is the position which he assigns to Jesus 
Christ in the scale. of being? That he believed Jesus Christ to 
be merely a man is a paradox which could be maintained by no 
careful reader of his Epistles. But if, according to St. Paul, 
Christ is more than man, what is He? Is He still only an Arian 
Christ? or is He a Divine Person? In St. Paul’s thought this 
question could not have been an open one. His earnest, sharply- 
defined faith in the One Most High God must force him to say 
either that Christ is a created being, or that He is internal to 
the Essence of God. Nor is the subject of such a nature as to 
admit of accommodation or compromise in its treatment. In 
practical matters, and where the law of God permits, St. Paul 
may. become all things to all men that he may by all means save 
some". But he cannot, as if he were a pagan politician of old, 
or a modern man of the world, compliment away his deepest 
faith*. He cannot ascribe Divinity to a fellow-creature by way 
of panegyrical hyperbole ; his belief in God is too powerful, too 
exacting, too keen, too real. St. Paul may teach the Athenians 
that we live and move and have our being in the all-present, all- 
encompassing Life of God y; he may bid the Corinthians expect 
a time when God shall be known and felt by every member of 


#1 Tim. i.17: τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ τῶν αἰώνων, ἀφθάρτῳ, ἀοράτῳ μόνῳ σοφῷ Θεῷ, 
τιμὴ καὶ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Here μόνῳ σοφῷ Θεῷ, excludes 
current Gnostic claims on behalf of Ζοηῃ5; in Rom. xvi. 27, (with which 
compare St. Jude 25,) it contrasts the Divine Wisdom manifested in the 
plan of Redemption through Jesus Christ with human schemes and theories, 
whether Jewish or Gentile. 

t χ Tim. vi. 15, 16: 6 μακάριος καὶ μόνος δυνάστης, 6 βασιλεὺς τῶν βασι- 
λευόντων, καὶ Κύριος τῶν κυριευόντων, ὃ μόνος ἔχων ἀθανασίαν, φῶς οἰκῶν 
ἀπρόσιτον, ὃν εἶδεν οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων, οὐδὲ ἰδεῖν δύναται, ᾧ τιμὴ καὶ κράτος 
αἰώνιον, ἀμήν. 

Ἵ 1 Cor, ix. 22. = 2 Cor. i, 18, ii. 17. Y Acts xvii. 28. 
VI 3 


er ΤΣ οὐ ᾿ / 
‘ ‘ 


δ τ ie 


310 St. Paul’s devotion to our Lord’s condescension. 


His great family to be all in 4115, But St. Paul cannot merge the 
Maker and Ruler of the universe, so gloriously free in His creative 
and providential action®, in any conception which identifies Him 
with the work of His hands, or which reduces Him to the level 
of an impersonal quality or force. The Apostle may contemplate 
the vast hierarchy of the blessed angels, ranging in their various 
degrees of glory between the throne of God and the children of 
men>, But no heavenly intelligence, however exalted, is seen 
in his pages to trench for one moment upon the incommunicable 
prerogatives of God. St. Paul may describe the regenerate life 
of Christians in such terms as to warrant us in saying that. 
Christ’s true members become divine by spiritual communion 
with God in His Blessed Son*. But the saintliest of men, the 
most exalted and majestic of seraphs, are alike removed by an 
infinite interval from the One Uncreated, Self-existent, Incor- 
ruptible Essence?, There is no room in St. Paul’s thought for 
an imaginary being like the Arian Christ, hovering indistinctly 
between created and Uncreated life; since, where God is be- 
lieved to be so utterly remote from the highest creatures beneath 
‘His throne, Christ must either be conceived of as purely and 
simply a creature with no other than a creature’s nature and 
rights, or He must be adored as One Who is for ever and neces- 
sarily internal to the Uncreated Life of the Most High. 

2. It has been well observed by the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ 
that ‘the trait in Christ which filled St. Paul’s whole mind was 
His condescension ;’ and that ‘the charm of that condescension 
lay in its being voluntary®.’ Certainly. But condescension is 
the act of bending from a higher station to a lower one; and 
the question is, from what did Christ condescend ? If Christ was 
merely human, what was the human eminence from which 
St. Paul believed Him to be stooping? Was it a social emi- 
nence? But as the favourite of the synagogue, and withal as pro- 
tected by the majesty of the Roman franchise, St. Paul occupied 
a social position not less widely removed from that of a Galilean 
peasant leading a life of vagrancy, than are your circumstances, 
my brethren, who belong to the middle and upper classes of this 
country, removed from the lot of the homeless multitudes who 
day by day seek relief in our workhouses. Was it an intellec- 


z τ Cor. xv. 28. 8. Rom. ix. 21. 
> Col. i. 16. These hierarchical distinctions appear to have been pre- 
served among the fallen angels (Eph, vi. 12), , 
¢ 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17; vi. 19, 20. | 4 Rom. xi. 34-36. 
& Ecce Homo, p. 49. ἢ : f Acts xxii. 29. | 
; _*[LEcE. 


ee ee Lg 


from what position did Christ condescend? 311 


tual eminence? But the Apostle who had sat at the feet of 


Gamaliel, and had drawn largely from the fountains of Greek 
thought and culture, had at least enjoyed educational advantages 
which were utterly denied to the Prophet of Nazareth. Was it 
then a moral eminence? But, if Jesus was merely Man, was He, I 
do not say morally perfect, but morally eminent at 411} Was not 
His Self-assertion such as to be inconsistent with any truthful 
recognition whatever of the real conditions of a created exist- 
ence? But was the eminence from which Christ condescended 
angelical as distinct from human? St. Paul has drawn the sharp- 
est distinction between Christ and the angels; Christ is related 
to the angels, in the belief of the Apostle, simply as the Author 
of their being’; while the appointed duties of the angels are to 
worship His Person and to serve His servants }, 

What then was the position from which Christ condescended ? 
Two stages of condescension are indeed noted, one within and 
one beyond the limits of our Lord’s Human Life. Being found 
in fashion as a Man, He voluntarily humbled Himself and became 
obedient unto deathi. But the earlier and the greater act of 
condescension was that whereby He had become Man out of 
a state of pre-existent glory *. St. Paul constantly refers to the 
pre-existent Life of Jesus Christ. The Second Adam differs 
from the first in that He is ‘from heaven!,’ When ancient 
Israel was wandering in the desert, Christ had been Him- 
self invisibly present as Guardian and Sustainer of the Lord’s 
people™, St. Paul is pleading on behalf of the poor Jewish 
Churches with their wealthier Corinthian brethren; and he 
points to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when He 
was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His 
poverty might ‘be rich. Here Christ’s eternal wealth is in 
contrast with His temporal impoverishment. For His poverty 
began with the manger of Bethlehem ; He became poor by the 


δἰ Col. i. 16. h Heb. i. 6, 14. 

i Phil. ii. 8: σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος, ἐ ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, γενόμενος 
ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ. 

k Ibid. vers. 6, 7: ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων, .. ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε͵ μορφὴν 
δούλου λαβών. 

1 1 Cor. xv. 47: 6 δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος [5 ΚύριοΞ] ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. ΟἿ, Tert. adv, 
Mare. v. 10. | 

m 1 Cor. x. 4: 7 δὲ πέτρα [[π6 πέτρα ἀκολουθοῦσα commemorated by Jewish 
traditions] ἦν ὁ Χριστός. Ibid. ver. 9 : μηδὲ ἐκπειράζωμεν τὸν Χριστὸν, καθὼς 
καί τινες αὐτῶν ἐπείρασαν. 

n 2 Cor. viii. 9: γινώσκετε γὰρ τὴν χάριν τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χρισ 
ὅτι δι’ ὑμᾶς ἐπτώχευσε πλούσιος ὧν, ἵνα ὑμεῖς τῇ ἐκείνου πτωχείᾳ πλουτῇ 


γ1] 


312 Christ ts ‘over all 


act of His Incarnation ; being rich according to the unbegun, 
unending Life of His Higher Nature, He became poor in time 9, 
When St. Paul says that our Lord was ‘ manifested in the fleshP,’ 
he at least implies that Christ existed before this manifestation ; 
when St. Paul definitely ascribes to our Lord the function of a 
Creator Who creates not for a Higher Power but for Himself, we 
rise from the idea of pre-existence to the idea of a relationship 
towards the universe, which can belong to One Being alone. 
This will presently be considered. 

Certainly St. Paul used the terms ‘form of God,’ ‘image of 
God,’ when speaking of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. But 
these terms do not imply that Christ’s Divinity only resembles 
or is analogous to the Divinity of the Father. They do not 
mean that as Man, He represents the Divine Perfections in 
an inferior and partial manner to our finite intelligence 
which is incapable of raising itself sufficiently to contem- 
plate the transcendent reality. They are necessary in order to 
define the personal distinction which exists between the Divine 
Son and the Eternal Father. Certainly it is no mere human 
being or seraph Whom St. Paul describes as being ‘over all, 
God blessed for ever'.” You remind me that these words are 


© Baur suggests that ἐπτώχευσε need mean no more than that Christ was 
poor. (Vorlesungen, p. 193.) But ‘der Aorist bezeichnet das einst gesche- 
hene Lintreten des Armseins (denn πτωχεύειν heisst nicht arm werden, 
sondern arm sein), nicht das von Christo gefiihrte ganze Leben in Armuth 
und Niedrigkeit, wobei er gleichwohl reich an Gnade gewesen sei.’ (Meyer 
in 2 Cor. viii. 9.) 

P r Tim. iii. 16: ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Cf. Bishop Ellicott in loc. The 
bishop pronounces ὃς to be the reading of the Codex A, ‘after minute 
personal inspection,’ and has adopted it in his text. Mr. Scrivener however 
has examined the Codex more recently, and with a different result. ‘On hold- 
ing the leaf,’ he says, ‘up to the light one singularly bright hour, February 7, 
1861, and gazing at it with and without a lens, with eyes which have some- 
thing of the power and too many of the defects of a microscope, I saw clearly 
the tongue of the € through the attenuated vellum, crossing the circle about 
two thirds up, (much above the thick modern line), the knob at its extremity 
falling without the circle. On laying down the leaf I saw immediately after 
(but not at the same moment) the slight shadow of the real ancient diameter, 
only just above the recent one.’ Still, upon a review of the whole mass of 
external proof, particularly of the verdict of Codex x, and of the versions 
and Fathers, Mr. Scrivener decides for ὃς as the probable reading of the text. 
See the very full statement in his ‘ Introduction to the Criticism of the New 
Testament,’ pp.452-455. If then it be admitted that the reading ©2 is too 
doubtful to be absolutely relied on ; in any case our Lord’s Pre-existence lies 
in the ἐφανερώθη (1 St. John i. 2), which cannot without violence be watered 
down into the sense of Christ?s manifestation in the teaching and belief 
of the Church, as distinct from His manifestation in history. 

4 Phil. ii. 6; Col. i. 15. t Rom. ix. 5. 

| [ LEecr. 


Gop blessed Jor ever.’ 313 


referred by some modern scholars to the Eternal Father. Cer- 
tainly they are: but on what grounds? Of scholarship? What 
then is St. Paul’s general purpose when he uses these words ? 
He has just been enumerating those eight privileges of the race 
of Israel, the thought of which kindled in his true Jewish heart 
the generous and passionate desire to be made even anathema 
for his rejected countrymen. ΤῸ these privileges he subjoins a 
climax. The Israelites were they, ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, ὃ 
ὧν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. It was from the 
blood of Israel that the true Christ had sprung, so far as His 
Human Nature was concerned ; but Christ’s Israelitic descent is, 
in the Apostle’s eyes, so consummate a glory for Israel, because 
Christ is much more than one of the sons of men, because 
by reason of His Higher Pre-existent Nature He is ‘over all, 
God blessed for ever.’ This is the natural® sense of the pas- 
sage. If the passage occurred in a profane author and there 
were no anti-theological interest to be promoted, few critics 
would think of overlooking the antithesis between Χριστὸς τὸ 
κατὰ σάρκα and Θεὸς εὐλογητός Ὁ, Still less possible would it be 


5 Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 76, note. M. Reuss says that the Catholic inter- 
pretation of Rom. ix. 5 is ‘l’explication la plus simple et la plus naturelle.’ 
‘Man hat hier verschiedene Auswege gesucht, der Nothwendigkeit zu entge- 
hen, [ὁ] ὧν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός auf Christum zu beziehen ; aber bei jedem bieten 
sie solche Schwierigkeiten dar, die immer wieder auf die einfachste und von 
der Grammatik gebotene Auslegung zuriickfiihren.’ (Usteri, Entwickelung 
des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffes, p. 309.) That the text was understood in 
the early Church to apply to Jesus Christ will appear from St. Iren, iii. 16, 3 ; 
Tert. adv. Prax. 13; St. Hipp. c. Noet. 6. So Origen; St. Athan. Orat.c. Ar. 
i. 10; Theodoret ; St. Chrys. de Incompr. Dei Nat. v. 2; in Joan. hom. xxxiii, 
1; in 1 Cor. hom. xx. 3. It seems probable that any non-employment of so 
striking a passage by the Catholics during their earlier controversial struggles 
with the Arians is to be attributed to their fear of being charged with con- 
struing it in a Sabellian sense. (Cf. Olsh. in loc.; Reiche, Comm. ii. 268, 
note.) The language of the next age was unhesitating: εἶπεν αὐτὸν “ ἐπὶ 
πάντων"... ‘Oedbv’...* εὐλογητὸν" . .. ἔχοντες οὖν τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ ὄντα Θεὸν 
καὶ εὐλογητὸν, αὐτῷ προσκυνήσωμεν. St. Procl. ad Arm. (Labbe, iii. 1231.) 
Wetstein erroneously assumed that those early fathers who refused to apply 
6 ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς to Christ, would have objected to the predicate actually 
employed by the Apostle, ἐπὶ πάντων Θεός. (Cf. Fritzsche, Comm. in. Rom. 
i. p. 262 sqq.) And indeed Socinus himself (see Tholuck in loc.) had no 
doubt of the reference of this passage to Christ; although he explained it of 
a conferred, not of a ‘natural’ Divinity. (Cat. Rac. 159 sqq.) See too Dr. 
Vaughan, Comm. in loc. against the ‘harsh, evasive and most needless inter- 
pretation,’ which applies it to the Father. 

t Observe Rom. i. 3, where ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα is in contrast 
a Ὑἱοῦ Θεοῦ... κατὰ Πνεῦμα ‘Ayiwovrns. 

ΥΙ 


314 Christ ἐς ‘over all Gon blessed for ever. 


to destroy this antithesis outright, and to impoverish the climax 
of the whole passage, by cutting off the doxology from the clause 
which precedes it, and so erecting it into an independent ascrip- 
tion of praise to God the Father". If we should admit that the 
doctrine of Christ’s Godhead is not stated in this precise form 
elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings *, that admission cannot be held 


ἃ As to the punctuation of this passage the early MSS. themselves of 
course determine nothing ; but the citations and versions to which Lachmann 
generally appeals for the formation of his text are decisively in favour of re- 
ferring ὁ ὧν to Χριστός. The Sabellian use of the text to prove that the Father 
became Man, and the orthodox replies shewing that this was not the sense of 
the passage, equally assume that the doxological clause refers to Christ. 
Nothing can with safety be inferred as to the received reading in the Church 
from the general and of course prejudiced statement of the Emperor Julian, 
that τὸν γοῦν Ἰησοῦν οὔτε Παῦλος ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν Θεόν. St. Cyril. cont. Jul. 
x. init., Op. tom. vi. p. 327. Two cursive MSS. of the twelfth century (5 
and 47, cf. Meyer), are the first which distinctly interpose a punctuation after 
σάρκα, and so erect the following clause into an independent doxology 
addressed to God the Father. But the construction which is thus rendered 
necessary (1) makes the participle ὧν altogether superfluous. In 2 Cor. xi. 31, 
6 ὧν εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας is an exactly parallel construction to that of 
Rom. ix. 5. Nothing but strong anti-theological bias can explain the facility 
with which the natural force of the passage is at once recognised in the 
former and denied in the latter case (see Prof. Jowett in loc., and Baur, Vor- 
lesungen, p. 194, who begs the question,—‘ Christus ist noch wesentlich 
Mensch, nicht Gott’). It need scarcely be added that there is no authority 
for transposing 6 ὧν into ὧν 6, in order to evade the natural force of the 
participle. (2) The construction which the isolation of the clause renders 
necessary violates the invariable usage of Biblical Greek. ‘If the Apostle 
had wished to express ‘‘ God, Who is over all, be blessed for ever,”’ he must, 
according to the unvarying usage of the New Testament and the LXX. 
(which follows the use of 17), have placed εὐλογητὸς first, and written 
εὐλογητὸς ὃ ὧν x.7.A. There are about forty places in the Old Testament 
and five in the New in which this formula of doxology occurs, and in every 
case the arrangement is the same, ““ Blessed be the God Who is over all, for 
ever.”’’ (Christ. Rem. April 1856, p. 469.). It may be added that in Ps. Ixvii. 
19, LXX. (cited by Winer, N. T. Gr. Eng. Tr. p. 573), Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς εὐλο- 
yntos, εὐλογητὸς Κύριος, the first εὐλογητὸς has no corresponding word in 
the Hebrew text, and appears to be interpolated. Dean Alford observes that 
1 Kings x. 6; 2 Chron. ix. 8; Job i. 21; Ps. cxii. 2, are not exceptions ; 
* since in all of them the verb εἴη or γένοιτο is expressed, requiring the sub- 
stantive to follow it closely.” We may be very certain that, if ἐπὶ πάντων 
Θεὸς could be proved to be an unwarranted reading, no scholar, however 


Socinianizing his bias, would hesitate to say that 6 ὧν εὐλογητὸς «.7.A. | 


should be referred to the proper name which precedes it. 

x Our Lord is not, we are reminded, called εὐλογητὸς elsewhere in the 
New Testament. But εὐλογημένος is certainly applied to Him, St. Matt. 
xxi. g; St. Luke xix. 28 ; and as regards εὐλογητὸς, the remarkable fewness 
of doxologies addressed to Him might account for the omission. The predi- 
cate could only be refused to Him on the ground of His being, in the belief of 
St. Paul, merely a creature. It is arbitrary to maintain that no word can 


[ LECT. 


Christ ἐς ‘our great Gop and Saviour’ 515 


to justify us in violently breaking up the passage, in order to 
escape from its natural meaning, unless we are prepared to deny 
that St. Paul could possibly have employed an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. 
Nor in point of fact does St. Paul say more in this famous text 
than when in writing to Titus he describes Christians as ‘ looking 
for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for usy.’ Here the 
erammar apparently, and the context certainly, oblige us to 
recognise the identity of ‘our Saviour Jesus Christ’ and ‘our 
Great God.’ As a matter of fact, Christians are not waiting for 
any manifestation of the Father. And He Who gave Himself 
for us can be none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Reference has already been made to that most solemn passage 
in the Epistle to the Philippians, which is read by the Church 


possibly be applied to a given subject because there is not a second instance 
of such application within a limited series of books. Against ἐπὶ πάντων 
Θεὸς, besides the foregoing objection, it is further urged that it cannot be 
applied to our Lord, Who, although consubstantial -with, is subordinate to, 
the Eternal Father, and withal personally distinct from Him ; cf. Eph. iv. 5; 
1 Cor. viii. 6, where, however, His Manhood, as being essential to His media- 
tion, is specially in the Apostle’s eye. But St. Paul does not call our Lord 6 
ἐπὶ πάντων @eds—the article would lay the expression open to a direct Sabel- 
lian construction ; St. Paul says that Christ is ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς, where the 
Father of course is not included among τὰ πάντα, 1 Cor, xvii. 273 and the 
sense corresponds substantially with Acts x. 36, Rom, x. 12. It asserts that 
Christ is internal to the Divine Essence, without denying His personal dis~ 
tinctness from, or His filial relation to, the Father. Cf. Alford in loc. ; 
Usteri, Entwickelung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffes, p. 309 sqq.; Olshausen, 
Comm. in loc. 

Y Tit. ii. 13: προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης 
τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ͵ ὃς ἔδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ 
ἡμῶν. ‘Nicht Gott und Christus, sondern bloss Christus gemeint ist ; denn 
és ist von der herrlichen Wiederkunft Christi die Rede, und eine Erscheinung 
Gottes (of the Father) anzunehmen, wire ausser aller Analogie ; auch bediirfte 
Gott der Vater nicht erst des erhebenden und preisenden Epithets μέγας, 
vielmehr deutet auch dieses auf Christum.’? (Usteri, Lehrbegriff, p. 310.) 
To these arguments Bishop Ellicott adds that the subsequent allusion to our 
Lord’s profound Self-humiliation accounts for St..Paul’s ascribing to Him, by 
way of reparation, ‘a title, otherwise unusual, that specially and antithetically 
marks His glory,’ and that two ante-Nicene writers, Clemens Alexandr. 
(Protrep. 7) and St. Hippolytus, together with the great bulk of post-Nicene 
fathers, although not all, concur in this interpretation. And the bishop holds 


_ that grammatically there i is a presumption i in favour of this interpretation, but, 


on account of the defining genitive ἡμῶν, nothing more. Nevertheless, taking 
ἡ great strength of the exegetical evidence into account, he sees in this text 

‘direct, definite, and even studied declaration of the Divinity of the Eternal 
Son, See his note, and Wordsworth in loc.; Welsch on Greek Article, ed. 


Rose, ἡ 293. 
yy: 


316 Chrest ‘in the form of’ and ‘equal with’ Gon. 


in the Communion Service on Palm Sunday 2, in order, as it 
would seem, to remind Christians of the real dignity of their 
suffering Lord. Our Lord’s Divine Nature is here represented 
as the seat of His Eternal Personality ; His Human Nature is a 
clothing which He assumed in time. Ἔν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων, 
«ον ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών ἃ, It is impossible not to 
be struck by the mysterious statement that Christ, being in the 
form of God, did not look upon equality with God (τὸ εἶναι ἶσα 
Θεῷ) as a prize to be jealously grasped at Ὁ (οὐκ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο). 
It has been maintained that St. Paul is here contrasting the 
apostolic belief in our Lord’s condescending love with an early 
Gnostic speculation respecting an Aton. This Alon desired to 
compass directly, and by a violent assault, the invisible and in- 
comprehensible God ; whereas God could only be really known 
to and contemplated by the Monogenes. The ambition of the 
fabled Aton is thus said to be in contrast with the ‘self-empty- 
ing’ of the Eternal Christ. Such a contrast, if it had been in 
the Apostle’s mind, would have implied the Absolute Pre-existent 
Divinity of Christ. Christ voluntarily lays aside the glory 
which was His; the fabled AZXon would violently grasp a glory 
which could not rightfully belong to him. But if this explana- 
tion of the energetic negative phrase of the Apostle should not 
be accepted, it is in any case clear that the force of St. Paul’s 
moral lesson in the whole passage must depend upon the real 
Divinity of the Incarnate and Self-immolating Christ. The 


z See Epistle for Sunday next before Easter. 

a Phil. ii. 6, 7. ‘Die Gnostiker sprachen von einem Aeon, welcher das 
absolute Wesen Gottes auf unmittelbare Weise erfassen wollte, und weil er 
so das an sich Unmégliche erstrebte aus dem πλήρωμα in das κένωμα herabfiel. . 
Dieser Aeon begieng so gleichsam einen Raub, weil er, der in der Qualitit 
eines gittlichen Wesens an sich die Fahigkeit hatte, sich mit dem Absoluten 
zu vereinigen, diese Identitiit, welche erst durch den ganzen Weltprocess 
realisirt werden konnte, gleichsam sprungweise, mit Einem Male, durch einen 
gewaltsamen Act, oder wie durch einen Raub an sich reissen wollte. So 
erhilt erst die bildliche Vorstellung eines ἅρπαγμός ihre eigentliche Bedeu- 
tung.’ (Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 266.) Compare, however, Meyer, Philipper- 
brief, p. 68, Anmerkung. Baur has spun a large web out of St. Irenzeus, 
Ady. Her. I. 2.1.2. The notion that the AZon sought to attain an identity 
with God,—and this assumption is necessary in order to construct a real 
parallel with St. Paul’s words,—has no foundation in the text of St. Irenzeus, 

> Cf. Bp. Ellicott in loc. ; and in Aids to Faith, p. 436; Dollinger, First Age 
of the Church, p. 163. E.T. renders ἁρπαγμὸν as ‘a spoil which was not His 
by right, and of which He might be deprived.’ ἄρπ. is clearly a thing or 
state, not an action. Thus the description of the glory from which our Lord 
stooped ends at ὑπάρχων : the description of His condescension begins with 
οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν and ἀλλ᾽ has its full force. 

[ LECT. 


Christ ‘the Image of the Invisible Gon’ 517 


point of our Lord’s example lies in His emptying Himself of the 
glory or ‘form’ of His Eternal Godhead. Worthless indeed 
would have been the force of His example, had He been in 
reality a created Being, who only abstained from grasping 
tenaciously at Divine prerogatives which a creature could not 
have arrogated to himself without impious folly*. Christians 
are to have in themselves the Mind of Christ Jesus ; but what 
that Mind is they can only understand, by considering what His 
Apostle believed Christ Jesus to have been, before He took on 
Him the form of a servant and became obedient unto death. 
Perhaps the most exhaustive assertion of our Lord’s Godhead 
which is to be found in the writings of St. Paul, is that which 
occurs in the Epistle to the Colossians4. This magnificent dog- 
matic passage is introduced, after the Apostle’s manner, with a 
strictly practical object. The Colossian Church was exposed to 
the intellectual attacks of a theosophic doctrine, which degraded 
Jesus Christ to the rank of one of a long series of inferior beings, 
supposed to range between mankind and the supreme God. 
Against this position St. Paul asserts that Christ is the εἰκὼν rod 
Θεοῦ τοῦ dopadrov—the Image of the Invisible God*. The ex- 
pression εἰκὼν rod Θεοῦ supplements the title of ‘the Son.’ As 
‘the Son’ Christ is derived eternally from the Father, and He is 
of One Substance with the Father. As ‘the Image,’ Christ is, 
in that One Substance, the exact likeness of the Father, in all 
things except being the Father. The Son is the Image of the 
Father, not as the Father, but as God: the Son is ‘the Image 
of God.’ The εἰκὼν is indeed originally God’s unbegun, unending 
refiection of Himself in Himself; but the εἰκὼν is also the Organ 
whereby God, in His Essence invisible, reveals Himself to His 
creatures. Thus the εἰκὼν is, so to speak, naturally the Creator, 
since creation is the first revelation which God has made of 
Himself. Man is the highest point in the visible universe ; in 


¢ The Arian gloss upon this text was this: ὅτι θεὸς dv ἐλάττων οὐχ ἥρπασε 
τὸ εἶναι ἴσα TH Θεῷ TH μεγάλῳ καὶ μείζονι. St. Chrysostom comments thus: 
Καὶ μικρὸς καὶ μέγας Θεὸς ἔνι; καὶ τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ τοῖς τῆς ἐκκλησίας δόγμασιν 
ἐπεισάγετε; ... Εἰ γὰρ μικρὸς, πῶς καὶ Θεός ; (Hom. vi. in loc.) The μορφὴ 
Θεοῦ is apparently the manifested glory of Deity, implying of course the 
reality of the Deity so manifested. Compare δόξα, St. John xvii. 5. Of this 
μορφὴ (as distinct from Deity Itself) our Lord ἐκένωσεν ἑαυτόν. The word 
ὑπάρχων points to our Lord’s ‘ original subsistence’ in the splendour of the 
Godhead. The expression ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων is virtually equivalent to 
τὸ εἶναι ica Θεῷ. See Dean Alford’s exhaustive note upon this passage. 

71 Col. i. 15-17. © Cf. 2 Cor. iv. 4: ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ. 
VI 


318 Christ, ‘ Begotten before every creature? 


man, God’s attributes are most luminously exhibited ; man is the 
image and glory of Godf But Christ is the Adequate Image 
of God, God’s Self-reflection in His Own thought, eternally pre- 
sent with Himself. As the εἰκὼν, Christ is the πρωτότοκος πάσης 
κτίσεως : that is to say, not the First in rank among created 
beings, but begotten before any created beings. That this is a 
true sense of the expression is etymologically certain’; but it 
is also the only sense which is in real harmony with the relation 
in which, according to the context, Christ is said to stand to the 
created universe), That relation, according to St. Paul, is 
threefold. Of all things in earth and heaven, of things seen and 
unseen, of the various orders of the angelic hierarchy, of thrones, 
of dominions, of principalities, of powers—it is said that they 
were created in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. Ἐν αὐτῷ, 


f x Cor. xi. 7: εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα Θεοῦ. 

& As εἰκὼν here defines our Lord’s relation to God the Father, so πρωτό- 
τόκος defines His relation to the creatures. βούλεται δεῖξαι ὅτι πρὸ πάσης τῆς 
κτίσεώς ἐστιν ὃ Ὑἱός᾽ πῶς dv; διὰ γεννήσεως" οὐκοῦν καὶ τῶν ἀγγέλων πρό- 
Tepos, καὶ οὕτως, ὥστε καὶ αὐτὸς ἔκτισεν αὐτούς. (Theophyl. in loc.) Christ 
is not the first of created spirits; He exists before them, and as One 
‘begotten not made.’ ‘Der genit. πάσης κτίσεως ist nicht Genit. partitiv. 
(obwohl diess noch de Wetée fiir unzweifelhaft halt), weil πᾶσα κτίσις nicht 
die ganze Schipfung heisst, mithin nicht die Kategorie oder Gesammthett 
aussagen kann, zu welcher Christus als ihr erstgebornes Individuum gehire : 
es heisst, jedwedes Geschipf; vrgl. z. πᾶσα οἰκοδομή, Eph. ii. 21.), sondern 
es ist der Genit. comparat.: der Erstgeborne in Vergleich mit jedem Geschipfe 


(5. Bernhardy, p. 139), ἃ. h. eher geboren als jedes Geschipf. Vrgl. ἡ 


Bahr z. St. ἃ. Ernesti Ursprung ἃ. Siinde, p. 241. Anders ist das Ver- 
haltniss Apoc.i. 5: πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν, wo τῶν νεκρῶν die Kategorie 
anzeigt, vrgl. πρωτότοκος ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς (Rom. viii. 29). Unser Genit. 
ist ganz zu fassen wie der vergleichende Genit. bei mp@ros Joh. i. 15, 30; 
Winer, p. 218; Fritzsche ad Rom. ii. p. 421. Das Vergleichungs-Moment 
ist das Verhaltniss der Zezt, und zwar in Betreff des Ursprungs: da aber 
letzterer bei jeder κτίσις anders ist als bei Christo, so ist nicht πρωτόκτιστος 


oder πρωτόπλαστος gesagt, welches von Christo eine gleiche Art der Entste- 


hung wie von der Creatur anzeigen wiirde, sondern πρωτότοκος gewihlt, 
welches in der Zeitvergleichung des Ursprungs die absonderliche Art der 
Entstehung in Betreff Christi anzeigt, dass er namlich von Gott nicht 
geschaffen sei, wie die anderen Wesen, bei denen diess in der Benennung 
κτίσις liegt, sondern geboren, aus dem Wesen Gottes gleichartig hervorge- 
gangen. Richtig Theodoret: οὐχ ὡς ἀδελφὴν ἔχων τὴν κτίσιν, GAN ὡς 
πρὸ πάσης κτίσεως γεννηθείς. Wortwidrig ist daher die Arianische Erkli- 
rung, dass Christus als das erste Geschipf Gottes bezeichnet werde.’ Meyer, 
Kolosserbrief, p. 184. 

h Schleiermacher’s desire to apply to the new creation, what is here said 
of the natural, is alluded to by Auberlen as an illustration of his tendency 
‘to expound the Bible by the verdict.of his devout consciousness, instead of 


permitting his consciousness to be regulated by the Bible.’ On the Divine . 


Revelation, pt. 2. iv. 2. a. | : 
[ LECT. 


Christ, the Author and the End of created life. 319 


ἐκτίσθη. ... δ αὐτοῦ, καὶ els αὐτὸν éxrictal, In Him. There 
was no creative process external to and independent of Him; 
since the archetypal forms after which the creatures are modelled, 
and the sources of their strength and consistency of being, eter- 
nally reside in Himk, By Him. The force which has sum- 
moned: the worlds out of nothingness into being, and which 
upholds them in being, is His; He wields it; He is the One 
Producer and Sustainer of all created existence. or Hum. 
He is not, as Arianism afterwards pretended, merely an inferior 
workman, creating for the glory of a higher Master, for a God 
superior to Himself. He creates for Himself; He is the End of 
created things as well as their immediate Source ; and in living 
for Him every creature finds at once the explanation and the 
law of its being. For ‘He is before all things, and by Him all 
things consist!’ After such a statement it follows naturally 
that the πλήρωμα, that is to say, the entire cycle of the 
Divine attributes, considered as a series of powers or forces, 
dwells in Jesus Christ; and this, not in any merely ideal or 
transcendental manner, but with that actual reality which men 
attach to the presence of material bodies which they can feel 
and measure through the organs of sense, Ἔν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ 


i Compare Rom. xi. 36: ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι᾽ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα. 
As in this passage the Apostle is speaking of God, without hinting at any 
distinction of Persons within the Godhead, he writes ἐξ αὐτοῦ, not ἐν αὐτῷ. 
_ The Eternal Father is the ultimate Source of all life, both intra and extra 
Deum; while the production of created beings depends immediately upon 
_the Son. The other two prepositions—the last being theologically of most 
import—correspond in the two passages. 

k ἐκτίσθη describes.the act of creation; ἔκτεσται points to creation as 
a completed and enduring fact. In ἐν αὐτῷ, the preposition signifies that 
‘in Christo beruhete (ursichlich) der Act der Schépfung, so dass die Vollzie- 
hung derselben in Seinen Person begriindet war, und ohne ihn nicht 
geschehen wire.’ Cf. St. John i. 3: χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν, ὃ γέγονεν. 
But although the preposition immediately expresses the dependence of 
created life upon Christ as its cause, it hints at the reason of this depend- 
ence, namely, that our Divine Lord is the causa exemplaris of creation, the 
κόσμος νοητὸς, the Archetype of all created things, ‘die Dinge ihrer Idee: 
nach, Selbst, er tragt ihre Wesenheit in sich.” (Olshausen in loc.) 

1 Col. 1. 17: καὶ αὐτός ἐστι πρὸ πάντων, καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε. 
Meyer in loc. ‘Und Er (Er eben), durch welchen und fiir welchen τὰ 
πάντα ἔκτισται, hat eine friihere Existenz als Alles, und das Saimmtliche 
besteht in ihm... . . πρὸ πάντων wie πρωτότοκος von der Zeit, nicht vom 
Range; wiederholt und nachdriicklich betont wird von P. die Priexistenz 
Christi. Statt ἔστι hatte er ἦν sagen kénnen (Joh. i. 1); jenes aber ist 
gesagt, weil Er die Permanenz des Seins Christi im Auge hat und darstellt, 
nicht aber historisch iiber ihn berichten will, was nur in den Hiilfssitzen 
a vers. 16. u. 19. geschieht.’ Cf. St. John viii. 58. 

VI 


320 Christ's Divinity in Heb. i. 5-14. 


πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς ἃ, Although throughout this 
Epistle the word λόγος is never introduced, it is plain that the 
εἰκὼν Of St. Paul is equivalent in His rank and functions to the 
λόγος of St. John. Each exists prior to creation; each is the 
one Agent in creation ; each is a Divine Person; each is equal 
with God and shares His essential Life; each is really none 
other than God. 

Indeed with this passage in the Colossians only two others 
in the entire compass of the New Testament, can, on the whole, 
be compared. Allusion has already been made to the prologue 
of St. John’s Gospel; and it is no less obvious to refer to the 
opening chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Most of those 
writers who earnestly reject the Pauline authorship of that 
Epistle admit that it is of primary canonical authority, and 
assign to its author the highest place of honour in ‘the school 
of St. Paul.’ There are reasons for believing that, at the utmost, 
it is not more distantly related to his mind than is the Gospel of 
St. Luke; if indeed it does not furnish a crowning instance of 
the spiritual versatility of the great Apostle, addressing himself 
to a set of circumstances unlike any other of which the records 
of his ministry have given us information. Throughout the 
Epistle to the Hebrews a comparison is instituted between 
Christianity and Judaism ; and this comparison turns partly on 
the spiritual advantages which belong to the two systems respec- 
tively, and partly on the relative dignity of the persons who 
represent the two dispensations, and who mediate accordingly, 
in whatever senses, between God and humanity. Thus our 
Incarnate Lord as the one great High-priest is contrasted with 
Aaron® and his successors. Thus too as the one perfect Re- 
vealer of God, He is compared with Moses® and the Jewish 


m Col. ii. 9: πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα. Meyer in loc, ‘Wird durch τῆς θεότητος 
naher bestimmt, welches angiebt, was seiner ganzen Fiille nach, d. i. nicht 
etwa blos theilweise, sondern in seiner Gesammtheit, in Christo wohne. .... 
ἡ θεότης die Gottheit (Lucian, Icarom. g; Plut. Mor. p. 415, C.) das 
Abstractum von 6 Θεός, ist zu unterscheiden von 7 θειότης dem Abstractum 
von θεῖος (Rom. i. 20; Sap. xviii. 9; Lucian de Calumn. 17). Jenes ist 
Deitas, das Gottsein, d.i. die gottliche Wesenheit, Gottheit ; dieses aber 
die Divinitas, d. i. die gittliche Qualitdt, Géttlichkeit. See too Abp. 
Trench, Syn. N. T. i. p. 8. Thus in this passage the πλήρωμα must be 
understood in the metaphysical sense of the Divine Essence, even if in 
Col. i. το it is referred to the fulness of Divine grace. Contrast too the 
permanent fact involved in the present κατοικεῖ of the one passage with 
the historical aorist εὐδόκησε of the other. 

Ὁ Heb. v. 4; x. II. ο [bid. iii. 1-6. 


[ LECT. 


Christ obeyed and worshipped by the Angels. . 321 


prophets. As the antitype of Melchisedec, Christ is a higher 
Priest than Aaron?; as a Son reigning over the house of God, 
Christ is a greater Ruler than the legislator whose praise it was 
that he had been a faithful servant4. As Author of a final, 
complete, and unique revelation, Christ stands altogether above 
the prophets by whom God had revealed His Mind in many 
modes and in many fragments, in revelations very various as to 
their forms, and, at certain epochs, almost incessant in their 
oceurrence'. But if the superiority of Christianity to Judaism 
was to be completely established, a further comparison was 
necessary. The later Jewish theologians had laid much stress 
upon the delivery of the Sinaitic Law through the agency - 
of angels acting as delegates for the Most High God’. The 
Author of Christianity might be superior to Moses and the 
prophets, but could He challenge comparison with those pure 
and mighty spirits compared with whom the greatest of the 
sons of Israel, as beings of flesh and blood, were insignificant 
and sinful? The answer is, that if Christ is not the peer of the 
angels, this is because He is their Lord and Master. The angels 
are ministers of the Divine Will; they are engaged in stated 
services enjoined on them towards creatures lower than them- 
selves, yet redeemed by Christ. But He, in His glory above 
the heavens, is invested with attributes to which the highest 
angel could never pretend. In His crucified but now enthroned 
Humanity, He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on 
hight; He is seated there, as being Heir:of all things*; 


P Heb. vii. 1-22. 
ᾳ Ibid. iii. 5,6: καὶ Μωσῆς μὲν πιστὸς ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ, ὡς θεράπων, 
. Χριστὸς δὲ, ὡς υἱὸς ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον αὑτοῦ, οὗ οἶκός ἐσμεν ἡμεῖς. The 
preceding words are yet more noteworthy: Moses and the house of Israel 
stand to Jesus Christ in the relation of creature to the Creator. πλείονος 
γὰρ δόξης οὗτος παρὰ Moony ἠξίωται, καθ᾽ ὅσον πλείονα τιμὴν ἔ ἔχει τοῦ οἴκου 6 
κατασκευάσας αὐτόν. πᾶς γὰρ οἶκος κατασκευάζεται ὑπό Tivos’ 6 δὲ τὰ πάντα 
κατασκευάσας (sc. Jesus Christ), Θεός. So too the ἀπὸ Θεοῦ ζῶντος of ver. 12 
refers most naturally to our Lord, not to the Father. 

τ Ibid. 1. 1: πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόταν πάλαι ὃ Θεὸς λαλήσας τοῖς πατράσιν 
ἐν τοῖς προφήταις. 

8 Ibid. ii. 2: 6 30 ἀγγέλων λαληθεὶς Adyos. Acts vii. 38: μετὰ τοῦ 
ἀγγέλου τοῦ λαλοῦντος αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ ὄρει Suwa. Ibid. ver. 53: οἵτινες ἐλάβετέ 
τὸν νόμον εἰς διαταγὰς ἀγγέλων. Gal. iii. 19: 6 νόμος ... προσετέθη... 
διαταγεὶς δι᾽ ἀγγέλων. 
es eb. ἢ ΤᾺ: λειτουργικὰ πνεύματα, εἰς διακονίαν ἀποστελλόμενα διὰ τοὺς 

“μέλλοντας κληρονομεῖν σωτηρίαν. 
ἃ Tbid. ver. 3: ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης ἐν ὑψηλοῖς. 
x Ibid. ver. 2: κληρονόμον πάντων. 
vi | ¥ 


322 How Christ differs from the Angels. 


the angels themselves are but a portion of His vast inheritance. 
The dignity of His titles is indicative of His essential rank v. 
Indeed He is- expressly addressed as God?; and when He 
is termed the Son of God, or the Son, the full sense of that 
term is drawn out in language adopted, as it seems, from the 
. Book of Wisdom ἃ, and not less explicit than that which we 
have been considering in the Epistle to the Colossians, although 
of a distinct type. That He is One with God as having 
streamed forth eternally from the Father’s Essence, like a 
ray of light from the parent fire with which it is unbrokenly 
joined, is implied in the expression ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης Ὁ, That 
He is both personally distinct from, and yet literally equal 
to, Him of Whose Essence He is the adequate imprint, is 
taught us in the phrase χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως, By Him, 
therefore, the universe was made; and at this moment all 
things are preserved and upheld in being by the fiat of His 
almighty word®. What created angel can possibly compare 
with Him? Inthe Name which He bears and which unveils 
His Nature‘; in the honours which the heavenly intelligences 
themselves may not refuse to pay Him, even when he is enter- 
ing upon His profound Self-humiliation’; in the contrast be- 
tween their ministerial duties and His Divine and unchanging 
Royalty; in His relationship of Creator both to earth and 
heaveni; and in the majestic certainty of His triumph over 


Υ Heb. i. 4: τοσούτῳ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων, bow διαφορώτερον 
παρ᾽ αὐτοὺς κεκληρονόμηκεν ὄνομα. As to γενόμενος, it will be borne in mind 
that the subject of the whole passage is the Word now truly Incarnate, 
and not, as is sometimes assumed, the pre-existent Logos alone. The 
γενόμενος would therefore refer to the exaltation of our Lord’s Humanity. 
(See Ebrard, Comm. in loc.) St. Cyril observes that it does not imply 
that in Christ’s superior nature, He could be made superior to angels. 
Thes. p. 199. 

2 Tbid. ver. 8: πρὸς δὲ τὸν Tidy, “ὃ θρόνος σου, ὃ Θεὺς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα 
τοῦ αἰῶνος. Ps. xlv. 6. 

a Wisd. vii. 263; cf. p. 62. © Heb. i. 3. 

Ὁ Ibid. A.V. ‘Express image of His Person.’ So Beza, who dreaded 
Arianism, and accordingly used ‘Person’ instead of ‘Substance,’ from 
an apprehension that the latter rendering would here imply something 
inconsistent with the Homoousion. 

4 Heb. i. 2: δὲ οὗ καὶ TOUS αἰῶνας ἐποίησεν. 

6 Ibid. ver. 3 : φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὑτοῦ. 

2 Ibid. ver. 5: Yids μου εἶ σύ. 

5 Ibid. ver. 6: προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι Θεοῦ. Psalm 
xcevii. 7. h Heb. i. 7-9, 14. 

i Ibid. ver 10: σὺ κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς, Κύριε, τὴν γῆν ἐθεμελίωσας, καὶ ἔργα τῶν 
χειρῶν σου εἰσὶν οἱ οὐρανοί. 

[ LECT. 


ἀπ 
τ Ἢ 
ΝΩ͂Ν 

‘ 


Christ'sDeity boundup with St. Paul’s whole mite 323 


all who shall oppose the advance of His kingdom k,—we recog- 
nise a Being, for Whose Person, although It be clothed in a 
finite Human Nature!, there is no real place between humanity 
and God. While the Epistle to the Hebrews lays even a 
stronger emphasis than any other book of the New Testament 
upon Christ’s true Humanity ™, it is nevertheless certain that 
no other book more explicitly asserts the reality of His Divine 
prerogatives. 

3. Enough will have been said, to shew that the Apostle Paul 
believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, not in the moral sense 
of Socinianism, nor in the ditheistic sense, so to speak, of 
Arianism, but in the literal, metaphysical, and absolute sense 
of the Catholic Church. Those passages in his writings which 
may appear to interfere with this conclusion are certainly to 
be referred either to his anxiety to insist upon the reality of 
our Lord’s Manhood, or to his recognition of the truth that 
Christ’s Eternal Sonship is Itself derived from the Person 
of the Father. From the Father Christ eternally receives an 
equality of life and power, and therefore, as being a recipient, 
He is so far subordinate to the Father. We have indeed 
already seen that Christ’s eternal derivation from the Father is 
set forth nowhere more fully than in the Gospel of St. John, 
and by the mouth of our Lord Himself. But the doctrine 
before us, as it lies in the writings of St. Paul, is not to be 
measured only by an analysis of those particular texts which 
proclaim it in terms. The evidence for this great doctrine 
is not really in suspense until such time as the critics may 
have finally decided by their microscopical and chemical ap- 
paratus, whether the bar of the © in a famous passage of 
St. Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy is or is not really discernible 
in the Alexandrian manuscript. The doctrine lies too deep in the 
mind of the Apostle, to be affected by such contingencies. It is 
indeed, as we have seen, asserted by St. Paul with sufficient 
explicitness ; but it is implied more widely than it is asserted. 
Just as it is inseparable from the whole didactic activity of 
our Lord Himself, so is it inextricably interwoven with the 
central and most vital teaching of His great ambassador. You 
cannot make St. Paul a preacher of Humanitarianism, without 


kK Heb. i. 13: πρὸς τίνα δὲ τῶν ἀγγέλων εἴρηκέ ποτε, “Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου, 
ἕως ἂν 0@ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν Gov; 
1 [bid. iii. 2: πιστὸν ὄντα τῷ ποιήσαντι αὐτόν. 


ΤΌΝ i. 14, 18. iv. 15 5 v.: 7. 
vi} ¥.2 


324 Christology of St. Paul ΤΥ isstonary Sermons. 


' warping, mutilating, degrading his whole recorded mind. Par- 
ticular texts, when duly isolated from the Apostle’s general 
teaching, may be pressed with plausible effect into the service 
of Arian or Humanitarian theories ; but take St. Paul’s doctrine 
as a whole, and it must be admitted to centre in One Who 
is at once and truly God as well as Man. 

St. Paul never speaks of Jesus Christ as a pupil of less 
originality and genius might speak of a master in moral truth, 
whose ideas he was recommending, expanding, defining, defend- | 
ing, popularizing, among the men of a later generation. St. Paul 
never professes to be working on the common level of human 
power and knowledge with a master from whom he differed, as — 
an inferior teacher might differ, only in the degree of his capacity 
and authority. St. Paul always writes and speaks as becomes 
’ the slave of Jesus. He is indeed a most willing and enthusiastic 
slave, reverently gathering up and passionately enforcing all 
that touches the work and glory of that Divine Master to Whom 
he has freely consecrated his liberty and his life. 

In St. Paul’s earliest sermons, we do not find the moral 
precepts of Jesus a more prominent element than the glories 
of His Person and of His redemptive work. That the reverse 
is the case is at once apparent from a study of the great dis- . 
course which was pronounced in the synagogue of the Pisidian 
Antioch. The past history of Israel is first summarized from a 
point of view which regards it as purely preparatory to the 
manifestation of the anticipated Saviour"; and then the true 
Messiahship of Jesus is enforced by an appeal to the testimony 
of John the Baptist°, to the correspondence of the circumstances 
of Christ’s Death with the prophetic announcements P, and to 
the historical fact of His Resurrection from the grave 4, which 
had been witnessed by the apostles as distinctly ™ as it had been 
foretold by the prophets’. Thus the Apostle reaches his prac- 
tical conclusion. To believe in Jesus Christ is the one condition 
of receiving remission of sins and (how strangely must such 
words have sounded in Jewish ears!) justification from all 
things from which men could not be justified by the divinely- 
given law of Mosest. To deny Jesus Christ is to incur those 
penalties which the Hebrew Scriptures denounced against scornful 


» Acts xiii. 17-23. © Thid. vers. 24, 25. P Thid. vers. 26—30. 

a Ibid. ver. 30. r Ibid. ver. 31. : 8 Tbid. vers. 32-37. 

t Tbid. vers. 38, 39: διὰ τούτου ὑμῖν ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν καταγγέλλεται" καὶ 
ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν τῷ νόμῳ Μωσέως δικαιωθῆναι, ἐν τούτῳ πᾶς 
ὃ πιστεύων δικαιοῦται. 

[ LECT. 


Discourses at Antioch, Athens, and Miletus. 325 


indifference to the voice of God and to the present tokens of 
His Love and Power , 

At first.sight, St. Paul’s sermon from the steps of the Areo- 
- pagus might seem to be rather Theistic than Christian. St. Paul 
had to gain the ear of a ‘ philosophical’ audience which imagined 
that ‘Jesus and the Resurrection’ were two ‘strange demons%,’ 
who might presently be added to the stock of deities already 
venerated by the Athenian’ populace. St. Paul is therefore eager 
to set forth the lofty spirituality of the God of Christendom ; 
but, although he insists chiefly on those Divine attributes which 
are observable in nature and Providence, his sermon ends with 
Jesus. After shewing what God is in HimselfY, and what are 
the natural relations which subsist between God and mankind 2, 
St. Paul touches the conscience of his Athenian audience by a 
sharp denunciation of the vulgar idolatry which it despised ἃ, and 
he calls men to repent by a reference to the coming judgment, 
which conscience itself foreshadowed. But the certainty of that 
judgment has been attested by the historical fact of the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus ; the risen Jesus is the future Judge >, 

Or, listen to St. Paul as with fatherly authority and tender- 
ness he is taking his leave of his fellow-labourers in Christ, the 
presbyters of Ephesus, on the strand of Miletus. Here the 
Apostle’s address moves incessantly round the Person of Jesus. 
He protests that to lead men to repentance towards God and 
faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ®, had been the single object 
of his public and private ministrations at Ephesus. He counts 
not his life dear to himself, if only he can complete the mission 
which is so precious to him because he has received it from the 
Lord Jesus¢. The presbyters are bidden to ‘shepherd the 
Church of God which He has purchased with His Own Blood?¢;’ 


Ὁ Acts xiii. 40: βλέπετε οὖν μὴ ἐπέλθῃ ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς τὸ εἰρημένον ἐν τοῖς 
προφήταις" “ Ἴδετε, οἱ καταφρονηταὶ, καὶ θαυμάσατε καὶ ἀφανίσθητε" ὅτι ἔργον 
ἐγὼ ἐργάζομαι ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ὑμῶν. Hab.i. 5. 

x Acts xvii. 18: ξένων δαιμονίων δοκεῖ καταγγελεὺς εἶναι. 

Σ ΤΌΙά. vers. 24, 25. z bid. vers. 26-28. 

a Ibid. vers. 29, 30. Ὁ Ibid. ver. 31. 

ς Ibid. XX, 21: διαμαρτυρόμενος . oo. THY εἰς τὸν Ocdy μετάνοιαν, καὶ πίστιν 
τὴν εἰς τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν. 

@ Tbid. ver. 24. 

6 Tbid. ver. 28: ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ (Kuptou, Tisch. al.] ἣν 
περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου͵ See Dr. Wordsworth’s note in loc. 
In the third edition of his Greek Testament, Dean Alford restored the 
reading τοῦ Θεοῦ, which he had abandoned for Κυρίου in the two former 
editions. Nothing can be added to the argument of the note in his fifth 
oh For Κυρίου are A, C, Ὁ, E; for Θεοῦ, B, x, Syr., Vulg. 

VI 


a 


326 Christology of St. Paul’s apologetic speeches. 


and the, Apostle concludes by quoting a saying of the Lord | 
Jesus which has not been recordéd in the Gospels, but which | 


was then reverently treasured in the Church, to the effect that 
‘it is more blessed to give than to receive f.’ 

In the two apologetic discourses delivered, the one from the 
stairs of the tower of Antonia before the angry multitude, and 
the other in the council-chamber at Czsarea before King 
Agrippa IT. of Chalcis, St. Paul justifies his missionary activity 
by dwelling upon the circumstances which accompanied and 
immediately followed his conversion. Everything had turned 
upon a fact which the Apostle abundantly insists upon ;—he 
had received a revelation of Jesus Christ in His heavenly glory. 
It was Jesus Who had spoken to St. Paul from heaven £; it was 
Jesus Who had revealed Himself as persecuted in His suffering 
Church}; it was to Jesus that St. Paul had surrendered his 
moral liberty i; it was from Jesus that he had received specific 
orders to go into Damascus* ; Jesus had commissioned him to 
be a minister and witness both of what he had seen, and of the 
truths which were yet to be disclosed to him!; it was by 
Jesus that he was sent both to Jews and Gentiles, ‘to open 
their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from 
the power of Satan unto God, that,’ continued the Heavenly 
Speaker, ‘they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance 
among them which are sanctified by faith that isin Me™’ It 


was Jesus Who had appeared to St. Paul when he was in an — 


ecstasy in the Temple, had bidden him leave Jerusalem suddenly, 
and had sent him to the Gentiles®. The revelation of Jesus had 
been emphatically the turning-point of the Apostle’s life ; it had 
first determined the direction and had then quickened the 
intensity of his action. He could plead with truth before Agrippa 
that he had not been disobedient unto the heavenly vision °. 
But who can fail to see that the Lord Who in His glorified 
Manhood thus speaks to His servant from the skies, and Who 
is withal revealed to him in the very centre of his soul P, is no 


f Acts xx. 35: μνημονεύειν τε τῶν λόγων τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, ὅτι αὐτὸς εἶπε" 
“Μακάριόν ἐστι μᾶλλον διδόναι ἢ λαμβάνειν. 


s Ibid. χχίϊ. 7; xxvi.1q4. Ἀ Ibid. xxii. 8; χχυΐ. 156. ἰ Ibid. xxii. το. ἡ 


k Ibid. 1 Ibid. xxvi. 16. τὰ Jbid. vers. 17, 18. 

ἢ [bid. xxii. 17: éyévero..... προσευχομένου μου ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, γενέσθαι 

με ἐν ἐκστάσει, καὶ ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν λέγοντά μοι, Σπεῦσον καὶ ἔξελθε ἐν τάχει ef 
Ἱερουσαλήμ. Ibid. ver. 21: εἰς ἔθνη μακρὰν ἐξαποστελῶ σε. 
_ © Jbid. xxvi. 19: οὐκ ἐγενόμην ἀπειθὴς τῇ οὐρανίῳ ὀπτασίᾳ. 

P Gal.i. 15, 16: εὐδόκησεν ὃ Ocds... . ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν Tidy αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί. 

[ LECT. 


SZ. Paul teaches Christ's Detty tmplicitly. 327 


created being, is neither saint nor seraph, but in very truth, the 
Master of consciences, the Monarch Who penetrates, inhabits, 
and rules the secret life of spirits, the King Who claims the 
fealty and Who orders the ways of men ? 

St. Paul’s popular teaching then is emphatically a.‘ preaching 
of Jesus Christ 4.’ Our Lord is always the Apostle’s theme ; 
but the degree in which His Divine glory is unveiled varies with 
the capacities of the Jewish or heathen listeners for bearing the 
great discovery. The doctrine is distributed, if we may so speak, 
in a like varying manner over the whole text of St. Paul’s 
Epistles. It lies in those greetings' by which the Apostle 
associates Jesus Christ with God the Father, as being the source 
no less than the channel of the highest spiritual blessings. It is 
pointedly asserted when the Galatians are warned that St. Paul 
is ‘an Apostle not from men nor by man, bué by Jesus Christ 
and God the Father®.’ It is implied in the benedictions which 
the Apostle pronounces in the Name of Christ without naming 
the Name of Godt. It underlies those early apostolical hymns, 
sung, as it would seem, in the Redeemer’s honour"; it justifies 


4ᾳ Acts ix. 20; xvii. 3, 18; xxviii. 31: διδάσκων τὰ wep) τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ. 
Cf. Ibid. v. 42 ; 2 Cor. iv. 5. 

r Rom. i. 7: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ 
Χριστοῦ. 1 Cor.i. 3; 2 Cor.i. 2; Gal. i. 3; Eph.i. 2; Phil. i. 2; (ΟἿ. i. 
2; 1 Thess. i. 1; 2 Thess. i. 2; Philemon 3. In 1 Tim. i. 2; 2 Tim.i.2; 
Tit. i. 4, ἔλεος is inserted between χάρις and εἰρήνη, probably because the 
clergy, on account of their great responsibilities, need the pitying mercy of 
God more than Christian laymen. 

5. Gal. i. 1: οὐκ Gm ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ BY ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ 
καὶ Θεοῦ Πατρός. 

t Rom. xvi. 20, 24: ἣ χάρις τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ μετὰ πάντων 
ὑμῶν. τ Cor. xvi. 23; 2 Cor. xiii. 12. In Gal. vi. 18, μετὰ τοῦ πνεύματος 
ὑμῶν. Phil. iv. 23; 1 Thess. v. 28. 2 Thess.ii. 16: αὐτὸς δὲ ὅ Κύριος ἡμῶν 
Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς, καὶ 6 Θεὸς καὶ Πατὴρ ἡμῶν, 6 ἀγαπήσας ἡμᾶς καὶ δοὺς παρά- 
κλησιν αἰωνίαν καὶ ἐλπίδα ἀγαθὴν ἐν χάριτι, παρακαλέσαι ὑμῶν τὰς καρδίας, καὶ 
στηρίξαι ὑμᾶς ἐν παντὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ ἀγαθῷ. 

ἃ Such are 1 Tim. i, 15, from a hymn on redemption. 

Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς 
ἦλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον 
ἁμαρτωλοὺς σῶσαι. 

And Ibid. iii. 16, from a hymn on our Lord’s Incarnation and triumph. 
ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ, 
ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι, 
ὥφθη ἀγγέλοις, 
ἐκηρύχθη ἐν ἔθνεσιν, 
ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ, 
ἀνελήφθη ἐν δόξῃ. 

vi] 


328 Implied Christology of the Epistles 


the thanksgivings and doxologies poured forth to His praise *. 
It alone can explain the application of passages, which are used 
in the Old Testament of the Lord Jehovah, to the Person of 
Jesus Christ Y ; such an application would have been impossible 
unless St. Paul had renounced his belief in the authority and 
sacred character of the Hebrew Scriptures, or had ‘explicitly 
recognised the truth that Jesus Christ was Jehovah Himself 
visiting and redeeming His people. 

Mark too how the truth before us enters into the leading 
topics of St. Paul’s great Epistles ; how it is presupposed even 
where it is not asserted in terms. Does that picture of the 
future Judge Whose Second Coming is again and again brought 
before us in the Epistles to the Thessalonians befit one who is 
not Divine2? Is it possible that the Justifier of humanity in 
the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians can be only a 
human martyr after all?: Why then is the effect of His Death so 
distinct in kind from any which has followed upon the martyr- 


dom of His servants®?? How comes it that by dying He has 


And 2 Tim. ii. 11-13, from a hymn on the glories of martyrdom. 


εἰ συναπεθάνομεν, καὶ συζήσομεν" 

εἰ ὑπομένομεν, καὶ συμβασιλεύσομεν" 

εἰ ἀρνούμεθα, κἀκεῖνος ἀρνήσεται ἡμᾶς" 

εἰ ἀπιστοῦμεν, ἐκεῖνος πιστὸς μένει" 
ἀρνήσασθαι ἑαυτόν οὐ δύναται. 


And Tit. iii. 4-7, from a hymn on the way of salvation; cf. Keble’s Sermons 
Acad. and Occ., p. 182. ᾿ 


ὅτε δὲ ἡ χρηστότης καὶ ἣ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ΘΕΟΥ͂, 
οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ ὧν ἐποιήσαμεν ἡμεῖς, 
ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ ἔλεον, ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς, 
διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας, καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΣ ‘ATIOY, 
οὗ ἐξέχεεν ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς πλουσίως, διὰ ἸΗΣΟΥ͂ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ͂ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν, 
ἵνα δικαιωθέντες τῇ ἐκείνου χάριτι, 
κληρονόμοι γενώμεθα κατ᾽ ἐλπίδα ζωῆς αἰωνίου. 


Although in Tit. iii. 4 Swrijpos Θεοῦ refers to the Father, it is Jesus Christ 
our Saviour through Whom He has given the Spirit and the sacraments, the 
grace of justification, and an inheritance of eternal life. Jesus is the more 
prominent Subject of the hymn. Compare the fragment of a hymn on 
penitence, based on Isa. lx. 1, and quoted in Eph. v. 14. 


ἔγειραι ὃ καθεύδων 
καὶ ἀνάστα ek τῶν νεκρῶν, 
καὶ ἐπιφαύσει σοι ὃ Χριστός. 


x Rom. ix. §; and perhaps xvi. 27, see Ols. in loc.; 1 Tim. i. 12: χάριν ἔχω 
τῷ ἐνδυναμώσαντί με Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ 7 ἡμῶν κ.τ.λ. 

Υ e.g. Joel ii. 32 in Rom. x. 13; - ix. 23, 24 in 1 Cor. i. 31, etc. 

z 1 Thess. iv. 16,173 2 Thess.i. 7, 8; ii. 8. 

2 Rom. iii. 25, 26; Gal. ii. τό, etc. St. Paul’s argument in Gal. iii. 20 
implies our Lord’s Divinity ; 3 since, if Christ is merely human, He would be 


[ LEcr. 


to the Thessalonians and the Romans. 429 


achieved that restoration of the rightful relations of man’s being 
towards God and moral truth», which the law of nature and 
the Law of Sinai had alike failed to secure? Does not the whole 
representation of the Second Adam in the Epistle to the Romans 
and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians point to a dignity 
more than human? Can He, Who is not merely a living soul, 
but a quickening Spirit; from Whom life radiates throughout 
renewed humanity ; from Whom there flows a stream of grace 
more abundant than the inheritance of sin which was bequeathed 
by our fallen parent,—can He be, in His Apostle’s mind, merely 
one of the race which He thus blesses and saves? And if Jesus 
Christ be more than man, is it possible to suggest any interme- 
diate position between humanity and the throne of God, which 
St. Paul, with his earnest belief in the God of Israel, could have 
believed Him to occupy ἢ 

In the Epistles to the Corinthians St. Paul is not especially 
maintaining any one great truth of revelation ; he is entering 
with practical versatility into the varied active life and pressing’ 
wants of a.local Church. Yet these Epistles might alone suffice 
to shew the high and unrivalled honour, paid to Jesus Christ in 
the Apostle’s heart and thought. Is the Apostle contrasting his 
preaching with the philosophy of the Greek and the hopes of 
the Jewish world around him? Jesus crucified® is his central 
subject ; Jesus crucified is his whole philosophy4. Is he pre- 
scribing the law of apostolic labours in building up souls or 
Churches? ‘Other foundation can no man lay’ than ‘Jesus 
Christ 6. Is he unfolding the nature of the Church? It is not 
a self-organized multitude of religionists who agree in certain 
tenets, but ‘the Body of Christ.’ Is he arguing against sins 
of impurity? Christians have only to remember that they are 
members of Christ’. Is he deepening a sense of the glory and 


a mediator in the same sense in which Moses was a mediator. Of the two 
parties, God and Israel, the μεσίτης of the Law could properly represent 
Israel alone., The μεσίτης of 1 Tim. ii. 5 is altogether higher. 

b δικαιοσύνη. 

© 1 Cor. i. 23, 24: ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον . . . . Θεοῦ 
δύναμιν καὶ Θεοῦ σοφίαν. 

4 Tbid. ii. 2: od γὰρ ἔκρινα τοῦ εἰδέναι τι ἐν ὑμῖν, εἰ μὴ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, 

καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον. 

6 Tbid. ili. 11: θεμέλιον γὰρ ἄλλον οὐδεὶς δύναται θεῖναι mapa! τὸν κείμενον, 
ὅς ἐστιν ᾿Ιησοῦς ὁ Χριστός. Isa. xxviii. 16; Eph. ii. 20. 

£ 1 Cor. xii. 27: ὑμεῖς δέ ἐστε σῶμα Kpewrss καὶ μέλη ἐκ μέρους. Thus he 
even identifies the Church with Christ. Ibid. ver. 12: καθάπερ γὰρ τὸ σῶμα 
ἕν ἐστι, Kal μέλη ἔχει TOAAG... . οὕτω καὶ ὃ Χριστός. 

Ἵ Ibid. vi. 15: οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν: 
VI 


330 Implied Christology of the Epistles 


of the responsibility of being a Christian? Christians are re- 
minded that Jesus Christ is in them except they be reprobates }. 
Is he excommunicating or reconciling a flagrant offender against 
natural law? He delivers to Satan in the Name of Christ ; he 
absolves in the Person of Christi, Is he rebuking irreverence 
towards the Holy Eucharist? The broken bread, and the cup of 
blessing are not picturesque symbols of an absent Teacher, but 
veils of a gracious yet awful Presence ; the irreverent receiver is 


guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord Which he does not 


‘discern *.’ Is he pointing to the source of the soul’s birth 
and growth in the life of light? It is the ‘illumination of the 
Gospel of the Glory of Christ, Who is the Image of God ;’ 
it is the ‘illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the Person of Jesus Christ!’ Is he describing the spirit 
of the Christian life? It is perpetual self-mortification for the 
love of Jesus, that the moral life of Jesus may be manifested 
to the world in our frail human nature™, Is he sketching 
out the intellectual aim of his ministry? Every thought is 
to be brought as a captive into submission to Christ®. Is he 
unveiling the motive which sustained him in his manifold suf- 
ferings? All was undergone for Christ®. Is he suffering from 
a severe bodily or spiritual affliction? Thrice he prays to Jesus 
Christ for relief. And when he is told that the trial will not be 
removed, since in possessing Christ’s grace he has all that he 


h 2 Cor. xiii. 5: ἢ od« ἐπιγινώσκετε ἑαυτοὺς, ὅτι Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν 
ἐστιν; εἰ μή τι ἀδόκιμοί ἐστε. 

iz Cor. v. 4, 5: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν “Inood,.... σὺν τῇ 
δυνάμει τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ παραδοῦναι τὸν τοιοῦτον τῷ Σατανᾷ. 
2 ΟὐΥ. ii. 10: καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ εἴ τι κεχάρισμαι, ᾧ κεχάρισμαι, δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἐν προσώπῳ 
Χριστοῦ, ἵνα μὴ πλεονεκτηθῶμεν ὑπὸ τοῦ Σατανᾶ. 

k Tbid. x. 16: τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας ὃ εὐλογοῦμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ 
αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστι; τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ σώματος 
τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστι; Ibid. xi. 27: ὃς ἂν ἐσθίῃ τὸν ἄρτον τοῦτον ἢ πίνῃ τὸ ποτή- 
ριον τοῦ Κυρίου ἀναξίως, ἔνοχος ἔσται τοῦ σώματος καὶ αἵματος τοῦ Κυρίου. 
Ibid. ver. 29: 6 γὰρ ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων ἀναξίως, κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει, μὴ 
διακρίνων τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Κυρίου. 

12 Cor. iv. 4. The god of this world has blinded the thoughts of the 
unbelievers, εἰς τὸ μὴ αὐγάσαι αὐτοῖς τὸν φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τῆς δόξης 
τοῦ Χριστοῦ, bs ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ. On the other hand, God, Who bade 
light shine out of darkness, has shined in the hearts of believing Christians, 
πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ 

ver. 6). 
' m ΝΜ. ver. 10: ἵνα καὶ ἣ (wh τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν φανερωθῇ. 

n Tbid. x. 5: αἰχμαλωτίζοντες πᾶν νόημα εἰς τὴν ὑπακοὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

© Ibid. xii. 10: εὐδοκῶ ἐν ἀσθενείαις, ἐν ὕβρεσιν, ἐν ἀνάγκαις, ἐν διωγμοῖς, 
ἐν στενοχωρίαις ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ. 

[ LECT. 


to the Corinthians. 331 


needs, he rejoices in the infirmity against which he had prayed, 
‘that the power of Christ may tabernacle upon him?P.’ Would 
he summarize the relations of the Christian to Christ ? To Christ 
he owes his mental philosophy, his justification before God, his 
progressive growth in holiness, his redemption from sin and 
death4. Would he mark the happiness of instruction in that 
‘hidden philosophy’ which was taught in the Church among the 
perfect, and which was unknown to the rulers of the non-Chris- 
tian world? It might have saved them from crucifying the Lord 
of Glory τ. Would he lay down an absolute criterion of moral 
ruin? ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be 
Anathema Maran-atha’.’ Would he impart an apostolical bene- 
diction? In one Epistle he blesses his readers in the Name of 
Christ alonet; in the other he names the Three Blessed Persons: 
but ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ is mentioned, not only 
before ‘the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,’ but even before ‘ the 
love of God.’ 

Here are texts, selected almost at random from those two 
among the longer Epistles of St. Paul, which are most entirely 
without the form and method of a doctrinal treatise, dealing 
as they do with the varied contemporary interests and contro- 
versies of a particular Church. Certainly some of these texts, 
taken alone, do not assert the Divinity of Jesus Christ. But 
put them together ; add, as. you might add, to their number ; 
and consider whether the whole body of language before you, 
however you interpret it, does not imply that Christ held 
a place in the thought, affections, and teaching of St. Paul, 
higher than that which a sincere Theist would assign to any 
creature, and, if Christ be only a creature, obviously inconsistent 
with the supreme and exacting rights of God. In these Epistles, 
it is not the teaching, but the Person and work of Jesus Christ, 
upon which St. Paul’s eye appears to rest. Christ Himself is, in 
St. Paul’s mind, the Gospel of Christ ; and if Christ be not God, 
St. Paul cannot be acquitted of assigning to. Him generally a 


P 2 Cor. xii. 7-9: ἐδόθη μοι σκόλοψ, τῇ σαρκὶ... . ὑπὲρ τούτου τρὶς τὸν 
Κύριον παρεκάλεσα, ἵνα ἀποστῇ ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ" καὶ elomed pot, °° Ἀρκεῖ σοι ἣ χάρις 
μου" ἧ γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελειοῦται. ἥδιστα οὖν μᾶλλον καυχήσομαι 
ἐν ταῖς ἀσθενείαις μου, ἵνα ἐπισκηνώσῃ ἐπ᾿ ἐμὲ 7 δύναμις τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

a 1 Cor. i. 30: ὃς ἐγενήθη ἡμῖν σοφία ἀπὸ Θεοῦ, δικαιοσύνη τε καὶ ἁγιασμὸς 
καὶ ἀπολύτρωσι-. 

τ [bid. ii. 8: εἰ γὰρ ἔγνωσαν, οὐκ ἂν τὸν Κύριον τῆς δόξης ἐσταύρωσαν. 

8 Ibid. xvi. 22: εἴ τις οὐ φιλεῖ τὸν Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν, ἤτω ἀνάθεμα, 
μαρὰν ἀθά. t Ibid. ver. 23. ἃ 2 Cor. xiii. 13. 


vi] ᾿ 


332  Lmplied Christology of the Epistles — 


prominence which is inconsistent with serious loyalty to mono- 
theistic truth. 

Still more remarkably do the Epistles of the First Imprison- 
ment present us with a picture of our Lord’s Work and Person 
which absolutely presupposes, even where it does not in terms 
assert, the doctrine of His Divinity. The Epistles to the Ephe- 
sians and the Colossians are even more intimately related to 
each other than are those to the Romans and the Galatians. They 
deal with the same lines of truth; they differ only in method 
of treatment. That to the Ephesians is devotional and expository ; 
that to the Colossians is polemical. In the Colossians the dignity 
of Christ’s Person is put forward most explicitly as against the 
speculations of a Judaizing theosophy which degraded Christ 
to the rank of an archangelx, and which recommended, as a 
substitute for Christ’s redemptive work, ascetic observances, 
grounded on a trust in the cleansing and hallowing properties 
and powers of naturey. In the Epistle to the Ephesians our 
Lord’s Personal dignity is asserted more indirectly. It is 
implied in His reconciliation of Jews and heathens to each 
other and to God, and still more in His relationship to the pre- 
destination of the saints. In both Epistles we encounter two 
prominent lines of thought, each, in a high degree, pointing to 
Christ’s Divine dignity. The first, the absolute character of 
the Christian faith as contrasted with the relative character of 


x Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 274: ‘Die im Colosserbrief gemeinten Engels- 
verehrer setzten ohne Zweifel Christus selbst in die Classe der Engel, als 
ἕνα τῶν ἀρχαγγέλων, wie diess Epiphanius als einen Lehrsatz der Ebioniten 
angibt, wogegen der Colosserbrief mit allem Nachdruck auf ein solches κρατεῖν 
τὴν κεφαλὴν dringt, dass alles, was nicht das Haupt selbst ist, nur in einem 
absoluten Abhiingigkeits-verhiliniss zu Ihm stehend gedacht wird, ii. 19.’ 

y Ibid. ‘Eine Lehre, welche den Menschen in religiéser Hinsicht von 
seinem natiirlichen biirgerlichen Sein, von der materiellen Natur abhingig 
machte, und sein religidses Heil durch die reinigende und heiligende Kraft, 
die man den Elementen und Substanzen der Welt zuschrieb, den Einfluss 
der Himmels-cérper, das natiirlich Reine im Unterschied von dem fir unrein 
Gehaltenen vermittelt werden liess, setzte die στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου an dieselbe 
Stelle, welche nur Christus als Erliser haben sollte. In diesem Sinne werden 
V. 8 die στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου und Christus einander gegeniibergestellt. Das 
ist die Philosophie in dem Sinne in welchem das Wesen der Philosophie als 
Weltweisheit bezeichnet wird, als die Wissenschaft, die es mit den στοιχεῖα 
τοῦ κόσμου zu thun hat. Als solche ist sie auch nur eine κενὴ ἀπάτη, eine 
blosse παράδοσις τῶν avOpdrwv.’ 

2 Ibid. p. 270: ‘ Der transcendenten Christologie dieser Briefe und ihrer 
darauf beruhenden Anschauung von dem alles umfassenden und iiber alles 
iibergreifenden Charakter des Christenthums ist es ganz gemiiss, dass sie in 
der Lehre von der Beseligung der Menschen auf eine tiberzeitliche Vorher- 
bestimmung zuriickgehen, Eph. i. 4, f.’ 

[ LECT. 


of the First Imprisonment. 333 


heathenism and Judaism; the second, the re-creative power 
of the grace of Christ». In both Epistles the Church is con- 
sidered as a vast spiritual society ὃ which, besides embracing as 
its heritage all races of the world, pierces the veil of the unseen, 
and includes the families of heaven4 in its majestic compass. 
Of this society Christ is the Head®, and it is ‘His Body, the 
fulness of Him That filleth all in all.’ Christ is the predestined 
point of unity in which earth and heaven, Jew and Gentile, 
*meet and are onef, Christ's Death is the triumph of peace in 
the spiritual world. Peace with God is secured through the 
taking away of the law of condemnation by the dying Christ, 
Who nails it to His Cross and openly triumphs over the powers 
of darkness8. Peace among men is secured, because the Cross 
is the centre of the regenerated world, as of the moral universe 4. 
Divided races, religions, nationalities, classes, meet beneath the 
Cross ; they embrace as brethren ; they are fused into one vast 
society which is held together by an Indwelling Presence, re- 
flected in the general sense of boundless indebtedness to a 
transcendent Lovei. Hence in these Epistles such marked 


@ Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 273: ‘Soist...auch die absolute Erhabenheit 
des Christenthums iiber Judenthum und Heidenthum ausgesprochen. Beide 
_verhalten sich gleich negativ (but by no means in the same degree) zum Chris- 
tenthum, das ihnen gegeniiber 6 λόγος τῆς ἀληθείας ist Eph. i. 13, oder φῶς 
im Gegensatz von σκότος (v. 8). Die Juden und die Heiden waren wegen der 
allgemeinen Siindhaftigkeit dem gittlichen Zorn verfallen, Eph. ii. 3. Der 
religiése Charakter des Heidenthums wird noch besonders dadurch bezeichnet, 
dass die Heiden ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ sind (ii. 12), ἐσκοτωμένοι TH διανοίᾳ ὄντες 
(iv. 18), ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν 
αὐτοῖς (ἰν. 18), περιπατοῦντες κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου κατὰ τὸν 
ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος (ii. 2). Beiden Religionen gegeniiber ist das 
Christenthum die absolute Religion. Der absolute Charakter des Christen- 
thums selbst aber ist bedingt durch die Person Christi. ὦ, 

b Col. iii. 9; Eph. iv. 21 sqq.; cf. Ibid. ii. 8-10. Baur, Vorlesungen, 
p- 270: ‘ Die Gnade ist das den Menschen durch den Glauben an Christus 
neu schaffende Princip. Etwas Neues muss namlich der Mensch durch 
das Christenthum werden.’ 

© Col. i. 5, 6: τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, τοῦ παρόντος εἰς ὑμᾶς, καθὼς καὶ ἐν παντὶ 
τῷ κόσμῳ, καὶ ἔστι καρποφορούμενον. Eph. i. 13. d Eph. iii. 15. 

e Eph. i. 22, 22 : αὐτὸν ἔδωκε κεφαλὴν ὑπὲρ πάντα τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶ 
τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ, τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι πληρουμένου. V. 30. 

f Ibid: ver. 10: ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, τά τε ἐν τοῖς 
οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς" ἐν αὐτῷ, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἐκληρώθημεν. 

& Col. ii. 14, 15. , 

4 Col. i. 20, 21: δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἀποκαταλλάξαι τὰ πάντα εἰς αὑτὸν, εἰρηνοποιήσας 
διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ σταυροῦ αὐτοῦ, δι᾽ αὐτοῦ, εἴτε τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, εἴτε τὰ ἐν ᾿ 
τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 

i Ibid. iti, 11: οὐκ ἔνι “Ἕλλην καὶ ᾿Ιουδαῖος, περιτομὴ καὶ ἀκροβυστία, βάρ- 
θεν Σκύθης, δοῦλος, ἐλεύθερος" ἀλλὰ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἐν πᾶσι Χριστός. Ob- 
VI | 


434 Implied Christology of the Epistles 
emphasis is laid upon the unity of the Body of Christ ΚΕ ; since 


the reunion of moral beings shews forth Christ’s Personal ‘Glory. 
Christ is the Unifier. As Christ in His Passion is the Combiner 
and Reconciler of all things in earth and heaven; so He ascends 
to heaven, He descends to hell on His errand of reconciliation 
and combination!, He institutes the hierarchy of the Church ™ ; 
He is the Root from which her life springs, the Foundation on 
which her superstructure rests"; He is the quickening, organ- 

izing, Catholicizing Principle within her ° The closest of natural 
ties is the chosen symbol of His relation to her; she is His 
bride. For her, in His love, He gave Himself to death, that 
He might sanctify her by the cleansing virtue of His baptism, 
and might so present her to Himself, her Lord,—blameless, 


serve the moral inferences in vers. 12-14, the measure of charity being 


καθὼς καὶ 6 Χριστὸς ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν. Especially Jews and Gentiles are re-, - 
conciled beneath the Cross, because the Cross cancelled the obligatoriness of | 


the ceremonial law. Eph. ii. 14-17: αὐτὸς γάρ ἐστιν ἣ εἰρήνη ἡμῶν, ὃ ποιήσας 
τὰ ἀμφότερα ἕν, καὶ τὸ μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ λύσας, τὴν ἔχθραν ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ 
αὐτοῦ, τὸν νόμον τῶν ἐντολῶν ἐν δόγμασι, καταργήσαε᾽ ἵνα τοὺς δύο κτίσῃ ἐν 
ἑαυτῷ εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον, ποιῶν εἰρήνην, καὶ ἀποκαταλλάξῃ τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους 
ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι τῷ Θεῷ διὰ τοῦ σταυροῦ, ἀποκτείνας τὴν ἔχθραν ἐν αὐτῷ. 

k Baur, Christenthum, p. 119: ‘ Die Einheit ist das eigentliche Wesen der 
Kirche, diese Einheit ist mit allen zu ihr gehoOrenden Momenten durch das 
Christenthum gegeben, es ist Ein Leib, Ein Geist, Ein Herr, Ein Glaube, Eine 
Taufe u.s. w. Eph. iv. 4,f..... Von diesem Punkte aus steigt die Anschanung 
héher hinauf, bis dahin, wo der Grund aller Hinheit liegt. Die einigende, 
eine allgemeine Gemeinschaft stiftende Kraft des Todes Christi lasst sich nur 
daraus begreifen, dass Christus iberhaupt der alles tragende und zusam- 
menhaltende Centralpunkte des ganzen Universums ist..... Die Christologie 
der Beiden Briefe haingt aufs Innigste zusammen mit dem in der unmittel- 
baren Gegenwart gegebenen Bediirfniss der Einigung in der Idee der Einen, 
alle Unterschiede und Gegensiitze in sich aufhebenden Kirche. Es ist, wenn 
wir uns in die Anschauungsweise dieser Briefe hineinversetzen, schon ein 
acht katholisches Bewusstsein das sich in ihnen ausspricht.’ This may be 
fully admitted without accepting Baur’s conclusions ‘as to the date and 
authorship ‘of the two Epistles. 

1 Eph. iv. 10: 6 καταβὰς, αὐτός ἐστι καὶ ὃ ἀναβὰς ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν 
οὐρανῶν, ἵνα πληρώσῃ τὰ πάντα. 

m [bid. vers. 11-12: καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκε τοὺς μὲν ἀποστόλους, τοὺς δὲ προ- 
φήτας, τοὺς δὲ εὐαγγελιστὰς, τοὺς δὲ ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους. πρὸς τὸν 
καταρτισμὸν τῶν ἁγίων, εἰς ἔργον διακονίας, εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ 
Χριστοῦ" μέχρι καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες εἰς τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς πίστεως καὶ 
τῆς ἐπιγνώσεως τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ 
πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

π᾿ Col. ii. 7: ἐρριζωμένοι καὶ ἐποικοδομούμενοι ἐν αὐτῷ. 

o Eph. iv. 15,16: 6 Χριστὸς, ἐξ οὗ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα συναρμολογούμενον καὶ 
συμβιβαζόμενον διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς τῆς ἐπιχορηγίας, κατ᾽ ἐνέργειαν ἐν μέτρῳ 
ἑνὸς ἑκάστου μέρους, τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ σώματος ποιεῖται εἰς οἰκοδομὴν ἑαυτοῦ 
ἐν ἀγάπῃ. Col. il. 10. 


[ LECT. 


awe 
. Fas 
epee a s 

Et i te ἡ 


of the First Imprisonment. 335 


immaculate, glorious?P. And thus He is the Standard of per- 
fection with which she must struggle to correspond. Her mem- 
bers must grow up unto Him in all things. Accordingly, not 
to mention the great passage, already referred to, in the Epistle 
to the Colossians, Jesus Christ is said in that Epistle to possess 
the intellectual as well as the other attributes of Deity4, In 
the allusions to the Three Most Holy Persons, which so remark- 
ably underlie the structure and surface-thought of the Epistle 
to the Ephesians, Jesus Christ is associated most significantly 
with the Father and the Spirit’. He is the Invisible King, 
~ Whose slaves Christians are, and Whose Will is to be obeyed®. 
The kingdom of God is His kingdomt; the Church is subject 
to Him. He is the Object of Christian study, and of Christian 
hope*. In the Epistle to the Philippians it is expressly said 
that all created beings in heaven, on earth, and in hell, when 
His triumph is complete, shall acknowledge the majesty even of 
His Human Naturey. The preaching of the Gospel is described 
as the preaching Christ2. Death is a blessing for the Christian, 
since by death he gains the eternal presence of Christ®, The 
Philippians are specially privileged in being permitted, not 
merely to believe on Christ, but to suffer for Him». The Apostle 


P Eph. v. 25-27: ὁ Χριστὸς ἠγάπησε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ ἑαυτὸν παρέδωκεν 
ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς" ἵνα αὐτὴν ἁγιάσῃ, καθαρίσας τῷ λουτρῷ τοῦ ὕδατος ἐν ῥήματι, ἵνα 
παραστήσῃ αὐτὴν ἑαυτῷ ἔνδοξον, τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, μὴ ἔχουσαν σπίλον ἢ ῥυτίδα 
ἤ τι τῶν τοιούτων, GAN ἵνα ἢ ἁγία καὶ ἄμωμος. 

a Col. ii. 3: ἐν ᾧ εἰσὶ πάντες οἱ θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ τῆς γνώσεως 
ἀπόκρυφοι. Ibid. i. 19, ii. 9. 

τ Eph. i. 3: Πατὴρ tod Κυρίου. Ibid. ver. 6: ἐν τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ. Ibid. 
ver. 13: ἐσφραγίσθητε τῷ Πνεύματι. Ibid. ii. 18: 8? αὐτοῦ ἔχομεν τὴν προσ- 
αγωγὴν οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐν ἑνὶ Πνεύματι πρὸς τὸν Tdrepa. Ibid. 11]. 6 : συγ- 
κληρόνομα, καὶ σύσσωμα, καὶ συμμέτοχα, where the Father Whose heirs we 
are, the Son of Whose Body we are members, the Spirit of Whose gifts we 
partake, seem to be glanced at by the adjectives denoting our relationship 
to the ἐπαγγελία. Cf. Ibid. iii. 14-17. 

8 [bid. vi. 6: μὴ Kar’ ὀφθαλμοδουλείαν ὡς ἀνθρωπάρεσκοι, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς δοῦλοι 
τοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

t Ibid. ν. §: ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ Θεοῦ. Col. i. 13: τὴν βα- 
σιλείαν τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ. 

u Eph. v. 24: 7 ἐκκλησία ὑποτάσσεται τῷ Χριστῷ. 

x Ibid. iv. 20; i. 12. 

y Phil. ii. 10: ἵνα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ ἐπουρανίων καὶ 
ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων. Cf. St. Cyril Alex. Thes. p. 128. | 

5. Thid. i. 16: τὸν Χριστὸν καταγγέλλουσιν. Ibid. ver. 18: Χριστὸς καταΎ 
γέλλεται. 

5. Ibid. ver. 23 : ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι, καὶ σὺν Χριστῷ εἶναι. 

> Ibid. ver. 29: duty ἐχαρίσθη τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, οὗ μόνον τὸ εἰς αὐτὸν πισ- 
oar ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πάσχειν. 

VI 


δ΄... (ass A mo he CC hristology of the 


trusts in Jesus Christ that it will be possible to send Timothy 
to Philippit. He contrasts the selfishness of ordinary Chris- 
tians with a disinterestedness that seeks the things (it is not 
said of God, but) of Christ¢, The Christian ‘boast’ or ‘glory’ 
centres in Christ, as did the Jewish in the Law®; the Apostle 
had counted all his Jewish privileges as dung that he might win 
Christ‘; Christ strengthens him to do all things$; Christ will 
one day change this body of our humiliation, that it may become 
of like form with the Body of His glory, according to the energy 
of His ability even to subdue all things unto Himself». In this 
Epistle, as in those to the Corinthians, the Apostle is far from 
pursuing any one line of doctrinal statement: moral exhor- 
tations, interspersed with allusions to persons and matters of 
interest to himself and to the Philippians, constitute the staple 
of his letter. And yet how constant are the references to Jesus 
Christ, and how inconsistent are they, taken as a whole, with 
any conception of His Person which denies His Divinity ! 

The Pastoral Epistles are distinguished, not merely by the 
specific directions which they contain respecting the Christian 
hierarchy and religious societies in the apostolical Church}, 
but also and especially by the stress which they lay upon the 
vital distinction between heresy and orthodoxy*. Each of these 


© Phil. ii, 19: ἐλπίζω δὲ ἐν Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ, Τιμόθεον ταχέως πέμψαι ὑμῖν. 

ἃ Tbid. ver. 21: οἱ πάντες γὰρ τὰ ἑαυτῶν (ζητοῦσιν, οὐ τὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ 
Ἰησοῦ. 

© Thid. iii. 3: καυχώμενοι ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. 

f [bid. ver. 8: 8¢ ὃν τὰ πάντα ἐζημιώθην' καὶ ἡγοῦμαι σκύβαλα εἶναι, ἵνα 
Χριστὸν κερδήσω, καὶ εὑρεθῶ ἐν αὐτῷ. 

5 Ibid. iv. 13: πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῷ ἐνδυναμοῦντί με Χριστῷ. 

h ΤΌΪΑ, iii. 21 : ὃς μετασχηματίσει τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν, εἰς τὸ 
γενέσθαι αὐτὸ σύμμορφον τῷ σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ, κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ 
δύνασθαι αὐτὸν καὶ ὑποτάξαι ἑαυτῷ τὰ πάντα. 

iz Tim. iii. iv. v.; Tit. i. 5-9; ii. 1-10, &c. 

* St. Paul’s language implies that the true faith is to the soul what the 
most necessary conditions of health are to the body. ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία 
(τ Tim. i. 10; Tit. i. 9; ii 1); so λόγος ὑγιὴς (Tit. ii. 8), λόγοι ὑγιαίνοντες 
(2 Tim. i. 13). Thus the orthodox teaching-is styled 7 καλὴ διδασκαλία 
(1 Tim. iv. 6), or simply 7 διδασκαλία (Ibid. vi. 1), as though no other 
deserved the name. Any deviation (ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν, Ibid. i. 3; vi. 3) is 
self-condemned as being such. The heretic prefers his own self-chosen 
private way to the universally-received doctrine; he is to be cut off, after 
two admonitions, from the communion of the Church (Tit. iii. 10) on the 
ground that ἐξέστραπται 6 τοιοῦτος, Kal ἁμαρτάνει, dv αὐτοκατάκριτος (Ibid.). 
Heresy is spoken of by turns as a crime and a misfortune, περὶ τὴν πίστιν 
ἐναυάγησαν (τ Tim. i. 19); ἀπεπλανήθησαν amd τῆς πίστεως (Ibid. vi. 10) ; 
περὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν hotéxnoav (2 Tim. ii. 18). Deeper error is characterized 
in severer terms, ἀποστήσονται τῆς πίστεως, προσέχοντες πνεύμασι we 

| LECT. 


Pastoral Epistles. 337 


lines of teaching radiates from a most exalted conception of 
Christ’s Person, whether He is the Source of ministerial power!, 
or the Sun and Centre-point of orthodox truth™. In stating 
the doctrine of redemption these Epistles insist strongly upon 
its universality™, The whole world was redeemed in the inten- 
tion of Christ, however that intention might be limited in effect 
by the will of man. As the theories, Judaising and Gnostic, 
which confined the benefits of Christ’s redemptive work to races 
or classes, were more or less Humanitarian in their estimate 
of His Person; so along with the recognition of a world- 
embracing redemption was found the belief in a Divine Re- 
deemer. Accordingly in the Pastoral Epistles the Divinity 
of our Lord is taught both in express terms° and by tacit 
implication. His functions as the Awarder of indulgence and 
mercy P, His living invisible Presence in the Church4, His 
active providence over His servants, and His ready aid in 


καὶ διδασκαλίαις δαιμονίων . . . . κεκαυτηριασμένων τὴν ἰδίαν συνείδησιν κιτ.λ. 


(1 Tim. iv. τ, 2); οὗτοι ἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ἄνθρωποι κατεφθαρμένοι τὸν 


νοῦν, ἀδόκιμοι περὶ τὴν πίστιν (2 Tim. iii. 8); ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας τὴν ἀκοὴν 
ἀποστρέψουσιν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοὺς μύθους ἐκτραπήσονται (Ibid. iv. 4). Heresy eats 
its way into the spiritual body like a gangrene, 6 λόγος αὐτῶν ὡς γάγγραινα 
νομὴν ἕξει (Ibid. ii. 17). “It is observable that throughout these Epistles 
πίστις is not the subjective apprehension, but the objective body of truth; 
not fides gud creditur, but the Faith. And the Church is στύλος καὶ ἑδραίωμα 
THs ἀληθείας (I Tim. iii. 15). This truth, which the Church supports, is 
already embodied in a ὑποτύπωσις ὑγιαινόντων λόγων (2 Tim. i. 13). 

11 Tim. i. 12: θέμενος eis διακονίαν. 2 Tim. ii. 3: στρατιώτης ᾿Ιησοῦ 
Χριστοῦ. So when the young widows who have entered into the Order 
of widows wish to marry again, this is represented as an offence against 
Christ, with Whom they have entered into a personal engagement, ὅταν 
γὰρ καταστρηνιάσωσὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, γαμεῖν θέλουσιν, ἔχουσαι κρίμα, ὅτι τὴν 
πρώτην πίστιν ἤθέτησαν (τ Tim. v. 11, 12). 

m 1 Tim. vi. 3, where moral and social truth is specially in question. 

n Ibid. ii. 3. Intercession is to be offered for all. τοῦτο yap καλὸν καὶ 
ἀπόδεκτον ἐνώπιον τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Θεοῦ, ds πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλει σωθῆναι 
καὶ εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας ἐλθεῖν. εἷς γὰρ Θεὸς, εἷς καὶ μεσίτης Θεοῦ καὶ 
ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς, ὃ Subs ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων. 
Cf. Ibid. iv. 10; Tit. ii. 11. 

ο Tit. ii. 13: τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

P x Tim. i. 16: διὰ τοῦτο ἠλεήθην, ἵνα ἐν ἐμοὶ πρώτῳ ἐνδείξηται ᾿Ιησοῦς 
Χριστὸς τὴν πᾶσαν μακροθυμίαν. Cf. ver. 12. Compare the intercession for 
the (apparently) deceased Onesiphorus : δῴη αὐτῷ ὃ Κύριος εὑρεῖν ἔλεος παρὰ 
Κυρίου ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ (2 Tim. i. 18); where the second Κύριος also must 
be Jesus Christ the Judge, at Whose Hands St. Paul himself expects to 
receive the crown of righteousness (Ibid. iv. 8). 

4 Observe the remarkable adjurations, διαμαρτύρομαι ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ 
Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν ἀγγέλων (1 Tim. v. 21); παραγγέλλω 
σοι ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ζωοποιοῦντος τὰ πάντα, καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ 
μαρτυρήσαντος ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου τὴν καλὴν ὁμολογίαν (Ibid. vi. 13). 

vi | Z 


338 Why can no human name be substituted for 


trouble", are introduced naturally as familiar topics. And if 
the Manhood of the One Mediator is prominently alluded to 
as being the instrument of His Mediation’, His Pre-existence 
in a Higher Nature is as clearly intimated ὕ, 

After what has already been said on the prominence of the 
doctrine of Christ’s Divinity in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
it may suffice here to remark that the power" of His Priestly 
Mediation as there insisted on, although exhibited in His 
glorified Humanity, does of itself imply a superhuman Person- 
ality. This indeed is more than hinted at in the terms of 
the comparison which is instituted between Melchisedee and 
His Divine Antitype. History records nothing of the parents, 
of the descent, of the birth, or of the death of Melchisedec ; 
he appears in the sacred narrative as if he had no beginning 
of days or end of life. In this he is ‘made like unto the Son 
of God,’ with His eternal Pre-existence and His endless days Ὁ. 
This Eternal Christ can save to the uttermost, because He 
has a Priesthood that is unchangeable, since it is based on 
His Own Everlasting Being *. 

In short, if we bear in mind that, as the Mediator, Christ is 
God and Man, St. Paul’s language about Him is explained by 
its twofold drift. On the one hand, the true force of the 


distinction between ‘One God’ and ‘One Lord’ or ‘One Mediator’ 


becomes apparent in those passages, where Christ in His as- 
sumed Manhood is for the moment in contrast with the Un- 
incarnate Deity of the Fathery. On the other hand, it is 
only possible to read the great Christological passages of the 
Apostle without doing violence to the plain force of his lan- 
guage, when we believe that Christ is God. Doubtless the 
Christ of St. Paul is shrouded in mystery ; but could any real 
intercourse between God and man have been re-established 
which should be wholly unmysterious? Strip Christ of His 


r 2 Tim. iv. 17: 6 δὲ Κύριός μοι παρέστη, καὶ ἐνεδυνάμωσέ με. Ibid. 
ver. 18: ῥύσεταί με ὃ Κύριος ἀπὸ παντὸς ἔργον πονηροῦ. 

51 Tim. ii. 5. 

ὁ Ibid. iii. 16. Baur, Vorlesungen, p. 351: ‘Mensch wird zwar Christus 
ausdriicklich genannt (1 Tim. ii. 5) aber von einem menschlichen Subject 
kann doch eigentlich nicht gesagt werden ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Es passt 
diess nur fiir ein héheres iibermenschliches Wesen.’ 

a Heb. vii. 25: σάζειν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς δύναται. 

v Heb. vii. 3: ἀπάτωρ, ἀμήτωρ, ἀγενεαλόγητοΞ᾽ μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν, μήτε 
ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων: ἀφωμοιωμένος δὲ TH Tig τοῦ Θεοῦ. 

x Tbid. vers. 24, 25: 6 δὲ, διὰ τὸ μένειν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀπαράβατον 
ἔχει τὴν ἱερωσύνην" ὅθεν καὶ σώζειν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς δύναται. 

y 1 Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iv. 5; 1 Tim. ii. 5. 

[ LECT. 


au 


the Name of Fesus, in the writings of St. Paul? 339 


Godhead that you may denude Him of mystery, and what 
becomes, I do not say of particular texts, but of all the most 
characteristic teaching of St. Paul? Substitute, if you can, 
throughout any one Epistle the name of the first of the saints 
or of the highest among the angels, for the Name of the Divine 
Redeemer, and see how it reads. Accept the Apostle’s implied 
challenge. Imagine for a moment that Paul was crucified for 
you; that you were baptized in the name of Paul2; that 
wisdom, holiness, redemption, come from an Apostle who, saint 
though he be, is only a brother-man. Conceive that the Apostle 
ascends fora moment his Master’s throne; that he says ana- 
thema to any who loves not the Apostle Paul; that he is 
bent upon bringing every thought captive to the obedience 
of Paul; that he announces that in Paul are hid all the treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge; that instead of protesting ‘We 
preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves 
-your servants for Jesus’ sake,’ he could say, ‘Paul is the end 
of the law to every one that believeth.’ Can you conceive it? 
What then is it in the Name of Christ which renders this 
language, when it is applied to Him, other than unintelligible 
or intolerable? Why is it that when coupled with any 
other name, however revered and saintly, the words of Paul 
respecting Jesus Christ must seem not merely strained, but 
exaggerated and blasphemous? It is not that truth answers 
to truth, that all through these Epistles, and not merely in 
particular assertions, there is an underlying idea of Christ’s 
Divinity which is taken for granted, as being the very soul 

and marrow of the entire series of doctrines? that when this 
is lost sight of, all is misshapen and dislocated? that when 
this is recognised, all falls into its place as the exhibition of 
infinite Power and Mercy, clothed in a vesture of humiliation 
and sacrifice, and devoted to the succour and ,enlightenment 
of man? 

4. It is with the prominent features of St. Paul’s charac- 
teristic teaching as with the general drift of his great Epistles ; 
they irresistibly imply a Christ Who is Divine. 

(a) Every reader of the New Testament associates St. Paul 
with a special advocacy of the necessity of faith as the indis- 
pensable condition of man’s justification before God. What is 
this ‘faith’ of St. Paul? It is in experience the most simple of 


2 1 Cor. i. 13: μὴ Παῦλος ἐσταυρώθη ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ; 7) eis τὸ ὄνομα Παύλου 
ἐβαπτίσθητε ; 
VI | Z2 


340 A Divine Christ implied 


the movements of the soul; and yet, if analysed, it turns out 
to be one of the most complex among the religious ideas in 
the New Testament. The word πίστις implies, first of all, both 
faithfulness and confidence ἃ ; but religious confidence is closely 
allied to belief, that is to say, to a persuasion that some unseen 
fact is true>. And this belief, having for its object the unseen, 
is opposed by St. Paul to ‘sight¢’ It is fed by, or rather 
it is in itself, a higher intuition than any of which nature is 
capable ; it is the continuous exercise of a new sense of spiritual 
truth with which man has been endowed by grace. It is indeed, 
a spiritual second-sight ; and yet reason has ancillary duties 
towards it. Reason may prepare the way of faith in the soul 
by removing intellectual obstacles to its claims; or she may 
arrange, digest, explain, systematize, and so express the intui- 
tions of faith in accordance with the needs of a particular locality 
or time. This active intellectual appreciation of the object- 
matter of faith, which analyses, discusses, combines, infers, is 
by no means necessary to the life of the Christian soul. It is 
a special grace or accomplishment, which belongs only to a 
small fraction of the whole body of the faithful. Their faith 
is supplemented by what St. Paul terms, in this peculiar sense, 
‘knowledge.’ Faith itself, by which the soul lives, is mainly 
passive, at least in respect of its intellectual ingredients: the 
believing soul may or may not apprehend with scientific accuracy 
that which its faith receives. The ‘word of knowledge,’ that is, 
the power of analysis and statement which is wielded by theo- 
logical science, is thus a distinct gift, of great value to the 
Church, although certainly not of absolute necessity for all 


@ Rom. iii. 3. πίστις Θεοῦ is the faithfulness of God in accomplishing 
His promises. Cf. πιστὸς 6 Θεός, 1 Cor. i. 9; 1 Thess. v. 24. πίστις is 
confidence in God, Rom. iv. 19, 20; as πεπίστευμαι, “1 have been entrusted 
with’ (Gal. ii. 7; 1 Tim. i. τ τ). 

b The transition is observable in Rom. vi. 8: εἰ δὲ ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ, 
πιστεύομεν ὅτι καὶ συζήσομεν aitG. For belief in the truth of an unseen 
fact upon human testimony, cf. 1 Cor. xi. 18: ἀκούω σχίσματα ἐν ὑμῖν 
ὑπάρχειν, καὶ μέρος τι πιστεύω. 

© 2 Cor. v. 7: διὰ πίστεως γὰρ περιπατοῦμεν, οὗ διὰ εἴδους. 

ἃ τ Cor. xii. 8: ἄλλῳ δὲ [δίδοται] λόγος γνώσεως, κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ Πνεῦμα. 
2 Cor. viii. 7: ἐν παντὶ περισσεύετε, πίστει, καὶ λόγῳ, καὶ γνώσει. So in 
τ Cor. xiii. 2 πᾶσα ἣ γνῶσις evidently means intellectual appreciation of 
the highest revealed truths, of which it is said in ver. 8 that καταργηθήσεται. 
Of course this γνῶσις was from the first capable of being abused ; only, when 
it is so abused, to the hindrance of Divine truth, the Apostle maintains 
that it does not deserve the name (ἀντιθέσεις τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. 
1 Tim. vi. 20). 
[ LECT. 


an St. Paul’s account of Fazth. 341 


Christians. But ‘ without faith’ itself, ‘it is impossible to please 
God ;’ and in its simplest forms, faith pre-supposes a procla- 
mation of its object by the agency of preaching®. Sometimes 
indeed the word preached does not profit, ‘not being mixed 
with faith in them that hear it f’? But when the soul in 
very truth responds to the message of God, the complete re- 
sponsive act of faith is threefold. This act proceeds simul- 
taneously from the intelligence, from the heart, and from the 
will of the believer. His intelligence recognises the unseen 
object as a facts. His heart embraces the object thus present 
to his understanding; his heart opens instinctively and un- 
hesitatingly to receive a ray of heavenly light» And his 
will too resigns itself to the truth before it; it places the 
soul at the disposal of the object which thus rivets its eye 
and conquers its affections. The believer accordingly merges 
his personal existence in that of the object of his faith; he 
lives, yet not he, but Another lives in himi. He gazes on 
truth, he loves it, he yields himself to it, he loses himself in it. 
So true is it, that in its essence, and not merely in its con- 
sequences, faith has a profoundly moral character. Faith is not 
merely a perception of the understanding; it is a kindling 
of the heart, and a resolve of the will; it is, in short, an act 
of the whole soul, which, by one simultaneous complex move- 
ment, sees, feels, and obeys the truth presented to it. 

Now, according to St. Paul, it is Jesus Christ Who is emi- 
nently the Object of Christian faith. The intelligence, the 
heart, the will of the Christian unite to embrace Him. How 
versatile and many-sided a process this believing apprehension 
of Christ is, might appear from the constantly varied phrase 
of the-Apostle when describing it. Yet of faith in all its aspects 
Christ is the legitimate and constant Object. Does St. Paul 


9 Rom. x. 14-17: 7 πίστις ἐξ ἀκοῆς. Cf. λόγος ἀκοῆς, τ Thess. ii. 13. 

f Heb. iv. 2. 

& 1 Thess. iv. 14, πιστεύειν is used of recognising two past historical facts ; 
Rom. vi. 8, of recognising a future fact; 2 Thess. ii. 11, of believing that 
to be a fact which is a falsehood. 

h Rom. x. 9, 10: ἐὰν ὁμολογήσῃς ἐν τῷ στόματί σου Κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν, καὶ 
πιστεύσῃς ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ σου ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς αὐτὸν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν, σωθήσῃ" καρδίᾳ 
γὰρ πιστεύεται εἰς δικαιοσύνην. Thus coincidently with the act of faith, 7 
ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν (Rom. v. 5). The love of 
God is infused into the heart at the moment when His truth enters the 
understanding ; and it is in this co-operation of the moral nature that the 
essential power of faith resides: hence faith is necessarily δι ἀγάπης 
ἐνεργουμένη. 

a li, 20: (@ δὲ οὐκ ἔτι ἐγὼ, (ἢ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός. 

VI 


342 A Divine Christ implied 


speak as if faith were a movement of the soul towards an end? 
That end is Christk. Does he hint that faith is a repose of 
the soul resting upon a support which guarantees its safety ἢ 
That support is Christ!. Does he seem to imply that by faith 
the Christian has entered into an atmosphere’ which encircles 
and protects, and fosters the growth of his spiritual life? That 
atmosphere is Christ™. Thus the expression ‘the faith of’ 
Christ’ denotes the closest possible union between Christ and 
the faith which apprehends Him™, And this union, effected 
on man’s side by faith, on God’s by the instrumentality of 
the sacraments ὃ, secures man’s real justification. The believer 
is justified by this identification with Christ, Whose perfect 
obedience and expiatory sufferings are thus transferred to him. 
St. Paul speaks of belief in Christ as involving belief in the 
Christian creedP; Christ has warranted the ventures which 
faith makes, by assuring the believer that He has guaranteed 
the truth of the whole object-matter of faitha. Faith then 
is the starting-point and the strength of the new life; and 
this faith must be pre-eminently faith in Christ". The precious 
Blood of Christ, not only as representing the obedience of His 
Will, but as inseparably joined to His Majestic Person, is itself 


k This seems to be the force of εἰς with πιστεύειν. Col. ii. 5: τὸ στερέωμα 
τῆς εἰς Χριστὸν πίστεως ὑμῶν. Phil. i. 29; Rom. x. 14. The preposition 
πρὸς indicates the direction of the soul’s gaze, without necessarily implying 
the idea of movement in that.direction. In Philem. 5: τὴν πίστιν, ἣν ἔχεις 
πρὸς τὸν Κύριον *Inoovr. Cf. 1 Thess. i, 8. 

1 y Tim. i. 16: πιστεύειν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ (sc. Jesus Christ) eis ζωὴν αἰώνιον. 
Πιστεύειν ἐπὶ is used with the acc. of trust in the Eternal Father. Cf. 
Rom. iv. 5, 24. 

m Gal. iii. 26: πάντες yap viol Θεοῦ ἐστε διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ. 
Eph. i. 15: ἀκούσας τὴν καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς πίστιν ἐν τῷ Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ. 2 Tim. iii. 15. 
The Old Testament can make wise unto salvation, διὰ πίστεως τῆς ἐν 
Χριστῷ ᾿Ἰησοῦ. 

π Rom. iii. 22: διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Gal. ii. 16. This genitive 
seems to have the force of the construct state in Hebrew. 

ο Tit. iii. 5; 1 Cor. x. 16. © 

P x Tim, iii. 16: ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ. Christ’s Person is here said to have 
been believed in as being the Centre of the New Dispensation. 

42 Tim. i. 12: οἶδα yep. @ πεπίστευκα, καὶ πέπεισμαι ὅτι δυνατός ἐστι 
τὴν παραθήκην μου φυλάξαι εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν. 

τ Gal. ii. 16: ἡμεῖς εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν. ἐπιστεύσαμεν, ἵνα δικαιωθῶμεν ek 
πίστεως Χριστοῦ. So Rom. i. 17: δικαιοσύνη γὰρ Θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ (Christ’s 
Gospel) ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. In like manner the Christian 
is termed 6 ἐκ πίστεως ᾿Ιησοῦ: his spiritual life dates from, and depends 
upon his faith. Rom. iii. 26. So, of ἐκ πίστεως (Gal. iii. 7); and, with 
an allusion to the Church as the true home of faith, οἰκείους τῆς aioe 
(Gal. vi. To). 

[ LECT. 


an St. Paul’s account of farth. 343 


an object in which faith finds life and nutriment; the baptized 
Christian is bathed in it, and his soul dwells on its pardoning 
and cleansing power. It is Christ’s Blood; and Christ is 
the great Object of Christian faiths. For not Christ’s teaching 
alone, not even His redemptive work alone, but emphatically 
and beyond all else the Person of the Divine Redeemer is set 
forth by St. Paul before the eyes of Christians, as being That 
upon Which their souls are more especially to gaze in an 
ecstacy of chastened and obedient love. 

Now if our Lord had been, in the belief of His Apostle, only 
a created being, is it conceivable that He should have been thus 
put forward’ as having a right wellnigh to engross the vision, 
the love, the energy of the human soul? For St. Paul does 
expressly, as well as by implication, assert that the hope* and 
the love" of the soul, no less than its belief, are to centre in 
Christ. He never tells us that a bare intellectual realization of 
Christ’s existence or of Christ’s work will avail to justify the 
sinner before God. By faith the soul is to. be moving ever 
towards Christ, resting ever upon Christ, living ever in Christ. 
Christ is to be the end, the support, the very atmosphere of its 
life. But how is such a relation possible, if Christ be not God ? 
Undoubtedly faith does perceive and apprehend the existence of 
invisible creatures as well as of the Invisible God. Certainly the 
angels are discerned by faith ; the Evil One himself is an object 
of faith. That is to say, the supernatural sense of the soul per- 
ceives these inhabitants of the unseen world in their different 
spheres of wretchedness and bliss.. But angels and devils are 
not objects of the faith which saves humanity from sin and 
death. The blessed spirits command not that loyalty of heart 
and will which welcomes Christ to the Christian soul. The soul 
loves them as His ministers, not as its end. No creature can 
be the legitimate satisfaction of a spiritual activity so complex 
in its elements, and so soul-absorbing in its range, as is the 
faith which justifies. No created form can thus be gazed at, 
loved, obeyed in that inmost sanctuary of a soul, which is con- 
secrated to the exclusive glory of the great Creator. If Christ 
were a creature, we may dare to affirm that St. Paul’s account 
of faith in Christ ought to have been very different from that 


5. Rom. iii. 25: διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι. We might have ex- 
pected ἐπὶ ; and St. Paul would doubtless have used it, if he had meant to 
express no more than confidence in the efficacy of Christ’s Blood. 

1 Tim. i. 1; 1 Cor. xv. 19; Col. i. 27. 

ἃ I Cor. xvi. 22. 

vi] 


344 A Divine Christ tmpled | 


which we have been considering. Tf, in the belief of St. Paul, 
Christ is only a creature; then it must be said that St. Paul, 
by his doctrine of faith in Christ, does lead men to live for the 
creature rather than for the Creator. In the spiritual teaching 
of St. Paul, Christ eclipses God if He is not God ; since it is 
emphatically Christ’s Person, as warranting the preciousness of 
His work, Which is the Object of justifying faith. Nor can it 
be shewn that the intellect and heart and will of man could 
conspire to give to God a larger tribute of spiritual homage 
than they are required by the Apostle to give to Christ. 

(8) Again, how much is implied as to the Person of Christ 
by the idea of Regeneration, as it is brought before us in the 
writings of St. Paul! St. Paul uses the word itself only once*. 
But the idea recurs continually throughout his writings ; it is 
not less prominent in them than is the idea of faith, This idea 
of regeneration is sometimes expressed by the image of a change 
of vesturey. The regenerate nature has put off the old man, 
with his deeds of untruthfulness and lust, and has put on the 
new or ideal man, the Perfect Moral Being, the Christ. Some- 
times the idea of regeneration is expressed more closely by the 
image of a change of form% The regenerate man has been 
metamorphosed. He is made to correspond to the Form of 
Christ ; he is renewed in the Image of Christ ; his moral being 
is reconstructed. Sometimes, however, and most emphatically, 
regeneration is paralleled with natural birth. Regeneration is 
a second birth. The regenerate man is a new creature®; he is 
a work of God; he has been created according to a Divine 
standard®, But—and this is of capital importance—he is also 
said to be created in Christ Jesus4; Christ is the sphere of the 


x παλιγγενεσία, Tit. iii. 5. In St. Matt. xix. 28, the word has a much 
wider and a very distinct sense. 

Υ Col. iii. 9, 10: ἀπεκδυσάμενοι τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον . . « .- «. καὶ ἐνδυσ- 
μενοι τὸν νέον. Eph. iv. 22-24: ἀποθέσθαι. .. ... τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον 
τὸν φθειρόμενον κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τῆς ἀπάτης" ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι 
τοῦ νοὺς ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐνδύσασθαι τὸν καινὸν ἄνθρωπον τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα 
ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ὁσιότητι τῆς ἀληθείας. Gal. iii. 27: Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε. 
Rom. xiii. 14. 

z Rom. xii. 2: μεταμορφοῦσθε τῇ avakavdce τοῦ vods ὑμῶν. Ibid. viii. 
29: obs προέγνω, καὶ προώρισε συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ Tiod αὑτοῦ, Cf. 
Col. iii. 10: κατ᾽ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν. 

@ Gal. vi. 15: καινὴ xriots. 

b Eph. ii. 10: αὐτοῦ γάρ [sc. Θεοῦ] ἐσμεν ποίημα. 

© [bid. iv. 24: τὸν κατὰ Θεὸν κτισθέντα. 

ἃ Thid. ii. 10: κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ἰησοῦ ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς. [ 

LECT. 


in St. Paul’s account of Regeneration. 345 


new creation®. The instrument of regeneration on Christ’s 
part, according to St. Paul, is the sacrament of baptism‘, to 
which the Holy Spirit gives its efficacy, and which, in the case of 
an adult recipient, must be welcomed to the soul by repentance 
and faith. Regeneration thus implies a double process, one 
destructive, the other constructive ; by it the old life is killed, 
and the new life forthwith bursts into existence. This double 
process is effected by the sacramental incorporation of the 
baptized, first with Christ crucified and dead, and then with 
Christ rising from the dead to life; although the language of 
the Apostle distinctly intimates that a continued share in the 
resurrection-life depends upon the co-operation of the will of 
the Christian, But the moral realities of the Christian life, 
to which the grace of baptism originally introduces the Chris- 
tian, correspond with, and are effects of, Christ’s Death and 
Resurrection. Regarded historically, these events belong to the 
irrevocable past. But for us Christians the Crucifixion and the 
Resurrection are not merely past events of history ; they are 
energizing facts from which no lapse of centuries can sever us ; 
they are perpetuated to the end of time within the kingdom 
of the Redemptioni. The Christian is, to the end of time, 


e 2 Cor. v. 17; and perhaps 1 Cor. viii. 6, where ἡμεῖς means ‘we re- 
generate Christians.’ 

f Tit. iii. 5: ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς, διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως 
Πνεύματος ᾿Αγίου. Gal. iii. 27: ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς Χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε, Χριστὸν 
ἐνεδύσασθε. 1 Cor. xii. 13. | 

8. Rom. vi. 3, 4: ἢ ἀγνοεῖτε ὅτι ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν εἰς Χριστὸν ᾿Ἰησοῦν, εἰς 
τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθημεν ; συνετάφημεν οὖν αὑτῷ διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος 
εἰς τὸν θάνατον. 

h Ibid. vers. 4, 5: ἵνα ὥσπερ ἢἤγέρθη Χριστὸς ex νεκρῶν διὰ τῆς δόξης τοῦ 
Πατρὸς, οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν. Ei γὰρ σύμφυτοι 
γεγόναμεν τῷ ὁμοιώματι τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἐσόμεθα. 

i Reuss, Théol. Chrét. ii. 140 : ‘La régénération en tant qu’elle comprend 
ces deux éléments d’une mort et d’une renaissance, est tout naturellement 
mise en rapport direct avec la mort et la résurrection de Jésus-Christ. Ce 
rapport a été compris par quelques théologiens.comme si le fait historique 
était un symbole du fait psychologique, pour lequel il aurait fourni la ter- 
minologie figurée. Mais assurément la pensée de lapétre va au dela d’un 
simple rapprochement idéal et nous propose le fait dune relation objective 
et réelle. Nous nous trouvons encore une fois sur le terrain du mysticisme 
évangélique; il est question trés-positivement d'une identification avec la 
mort et la vie dw Sauveur, et il n’y a ict de figurée que l expression, puisqu’au 
fond il ne s’agit pas de l’existence physique du Chrétien. Oui, d’aprés Paul, 
le croyant meurt avec Christ, pour ressusciter avec lui; et cette phrase ne 


s’explique pas par ce que nous pourrions appeler un jeu de mots spirituel, .. Ὁ i 
ou un rapprochement ingénieux; elle est Vapplication du grand princi δ΄ 


de Tunion personnelle, @aprés lequel Vexistence propre de Vhomme ceésse: 


réellement, pour se confondre avec celle du Christ, qui répete, pour ainsi ΦΣ 


vi] iY 


ah. , 
a; } ak \ 


\ 


Fis “ 


\ 


¢/' 


346 A Divine Christ emplied 


crucified with Christ ¥; he dies with Christ!; he is buried with 
Christ™; he is quickened together with Christ™; he rises with 
Christ ©® ; he lives with Christ. He is not merely made to sit. 
together in heavenly. places as being in Christ Jesus4, he is a 
member of His Body, as out of His Flesh and out of His Bones?. 
And of this profound incorporation baptism is the original 
instrument. The very form of the sacrament of regeneration, 
as it was administered to the adult multitudes who in the early 
days of the Church pressed for admittance into her communion, 
harmonizes with the spiritual results which it effects.. As the 
neophyte is plunged beneath the waters, so the old nature is 
slain and buried with Christ. As Christ, crucified and entombed, 
rises with resistless might from the grave which can no longer 
hold Him, so, to the eye of faith, the Christian is raised from 
the bath of regeneration radiant with a new and supernatural 
life. His gaze is to be fixed henceforth on Christ, Who, being 
raised from the dead, dieth no more. The Christian indeed may 
fail to persevere ; he may fall from this high grace in which he 
stands. But he need not do so; and meanwhile he is bound to 
account himself as ‘dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord &,’ | 


dire, la sienne, avec ses deux faits capitaux, dans chaque individualité se 
donnant ἃ lui.’ O si sic omnia! 

K Rom. vi. 6: 6 παλαιὸς ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος συνεσταυρώθη. Gal. ii. 20: Χριστῷ 
συνεσταύρωμαι. 

1.2 Tim. ii. 11: συναπεθάνομεν. Rom. vi. 8: ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ. 

m Rom. vi. 4: συνετάφημεν οὖν αὐτῷ διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος. Col. ii. 12: 
συνταφέντες αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ βαπτίσματι. 

n Eph. ii. 5: συνεζωοποίησε τῷ Χριστῷ. Col. ii. 13: συνεζωοποίησε ow 
αὐτῷ. | 

© Eph. ii. 6: συνήγειρε [τῷ Χριστῷ]. There is no sufficient reason for 
understanding Eph. ii. 5, 6 of the future resurrection alone; although in that 
passage the idea of the future resurrection (cf. ver. 7) is probably combined 
with that of the spiritual resurrection of souls in the kingdom of grace. 
We have been raised with Christ here, that we may live with Him hereafter, 
Col. ii. 12: ἐν ᾧ καὶ [sc. ἐν Χριστῷ] συνηγέρθητε διὰ τῆς πίστεως τῆς ἐνερ- 
γείας τοῦ Θεοῦ. ΤΡ]ὰ. iii. 1. ; 

P Rom. vi. 8: συζήσομεν αὐτῷ. 2 Tim. ii. 11: εἰ γὰρ συναπεθάνομεν, καὶ 
συζήσομεν. ᾿ ier 

a Eph. ii. 6: συνεκάθισεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ. 

τ Tbid. v. 30: μέλη ἐσμὲν τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκ 
τῶν ὀστέων αὐτοῦ. Cf. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 7: ‘We are of Him and 
in Him, even as though our very flesh and bones should be made continuate 
with His.’ : : | 

5. Rom. vi. 10,11: ὃ yap ἀπέθανε [sc. ὁ Χριστὸς], τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ἀπέθανεν 
ἐφάπαξ᾽ ὃ δέ Ci, GH τῷ Θεῷ. οὕτω καὶ ὑμεῖς λογίζεσθε ἑαυτοὺς νεκροὺς μὲν 
εἶναι τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, ζῶντας δὲ τῷ Θεῷ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν. [ 

LECT. 


an St. Paul’s account of Regeneration. 447 


This regenerate or Christian life is further described by two 
most remarkable expressions.. The Apostle speaks sometimes 
of Christians being in Christ *; sometimes of Christ being in 
Christianst.. The most recent criticism refuses to sanction the 
efforts which in former years have been made to empty these 
expressions of their literal and natural force. Hooker has ob- 
served that it is ‘too cold an -interpretation whereby some men 
expound being in Christ to import nothing else but only that 
the selfsame nature which maketh us to be men is in Him, and 
maketh Him man as we are. For what man in the world is 
there which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus ChristV?’ 

Nor will it suffice to say that in such phrases as are here in 
question, ‘Christ’ means only the moral teaching of Christ, and 
that a Christian is ‘in Christ’ by the force of a mere intellectual 
loyalty to the Sermon on the Mount. The expression is too 
energetic to admit of this treatment ; it resists any but a literal 
explanation. By a vigorous metaphor an enthusiastic Platonist 
might perhaps speak of his ‘living in’ Plato, meaning thereby 
that his whole intellectual activity is absorbed by and occupied 
with the recorded thought of that philosopher. But he would 
scarcely say that he is ‘in’ Plato; since such a phrase would 
imply not merely an intellectual communion with Plato’s mind, 
but an objective inherence in his nature or being. Still less 
possible would it be to adopt the alternative phrase, and say that 
Plato is ‘in’ the student of Plato. When St. Paul uses these 
expressions to denote a Christian’s relation to Christ, he plainly 
is not recording any subjective impression of the human mind ; 
he is pointing to an objective and independent fact, strictly pecu- 
liar to the kingdom of the Incarnation. The regenerate Chris- 
tian is as really ‘in’ Christ, as every member of the human family 
is ‘in’ our first parent Adamx. Christ is indeed much more 
to the Christian than is Adam to his descendants; Christ is the 
sphere in which the Christian. moves and breathes; but Christ is 
also the Parent of that new nature in which he shares ; Christ is 
the Head of a Body, whereof he is really a member; nay, the Body 
of which he is a member is itself Christy. From Christ, risen, 


t Rom. xii. 5; 1 Cor. i. 2; xv. 22; 2 Cor. ii. 17; v. 173; xii. 19; Gal. i. 
22; iii. 26; Eph. i. 3, 10; ili. 6; Phil. i. 1; 1 Thess. iv. 16. 

ἃ Gal. ii. 20; Eph. iii. 17; 2 Cor. xiii. 5 ; Col. i. 27. 

Y Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 7. 

* See Olshausen on the Epistle to the Romans, § 9, ‘ Parallel between 
Adam and Christ,’ chap. v. 12-21, Introductory Remarks. 

Υ 1 Cor. xii. 12. 
VI | 


348= Faith in a Divine Christ the motive of 


ascended, glorified, as from an exhaustless storehouse, there flow 
powers of unspeakable virtue ; and in this life-stream the believ- 
ing and baptized Christian is bathed and lives. And conversely, 
Christ lives in the Christian ; the soul and body of the Chris- 
tian are the temple of Christ ; the Christian is well assured that 
Jesus Christ is in him, except he be reprobate 2. 

My brethren, what becomes of this language if Jesus Christ be 
not truly God? No conceivable relationship to a human teacher 
or to a created being will sustain its weight. If it be not a mass 
of crude, vapid, worthless, misleading metaphor, it indicates rela- 
tionship with One Who is altogether higher than the sons of men, 
altogether higher than the highest archangel. It is true that we 
arein Him, by being joined to His Human Nature; but what is it 
which thus makes His Human Nature a re-creative and world- 
embracing power? Why is it that if any man be in Christ, there 
is a new creation® of his moral being? And how can Christ 
really be in us, if He is not one with the Searcher of hearts? 
Surely He only Who made the soul can thus sound its depths, 
and dwell within it, and renew its powers, and enlarge its capa- 
cities. If Christ be not God, must not this renewal of man’s 
nature rest only on an empty fiction, must not this regeneration 
of man’s soul be but the ecstacy of an enthusiastic dreamer ? 

(y) It would, then, be a considerable error to recognise the 
doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity only in those passages of St. Paul’s 
writings which distinctly assert it. The indirect evidence of the 
Apostle’s hold upon the doctrine is much wider and deeper than 
to admit of being exhibited in a given number of isolated texts ; 
since the doctrine colours, underlies, interpenetrates the most 
characteristic features of his thought and teaching. The proof 
of this might be extended almost indefinitely ; but let it suffice 
to observe that the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity is the key to 
the greatest polemical struggle of the Apostle’s whole life. Of 
themselves, neither the importation of Jewish ceremonial, nor 
even the disposition to sacrifice the Catholicity of the Church to 
a petty nationalism, would fully account for the Apostle’s attitude 
of earnest hostility to those Judaizing teachers whom he encoun- 
tered at Corinth, in Galatia, and, in a somewhat altered guise, at 
Colossze and at Ephesus. For, in point of fact, the Judaizers 
implied more than they expressly asserted. They implied that 
Christ’s religion was not of so perfect and absolute a character 
as to make additions to it an irreverent impertinence. They 


z 2 Cor. xiii. 5. - 8 Tbid. v. 17: εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ xrlors. 
[ LECT. 


St. Paul’s opposition to the Fudaizers. 449 


EEE EE ΜΝΩ ΣΝ —_ Ρ "TT. = 


implied that they did its Founder no capital wrong, when, instead 
of recognising Him as the Saviour of the whole human family, 
they practically purposed to limit the applicability of His work 


- to a narrow section of it. They implied that there was nothing 


in His majestic Person which should have forbidden them to 
range those dead rites of the old law, which He had fulfilled 
and abolished, side by side with the Cross and Sacraments of 
Redemption. The keen instinct of the Apostle detected the 
wound thus indirectly but surely aimed at his Master’s honour ; 
and St. Paul’s love for Christ was -the exact measure of his 
determined opposition to the influence and action of the Juda- 
izers. If the Judaizers had believed in the true Divinity of 
Jesus, they could not have returned to the ‘weak and beggarly 
elements’ of systems which had paled and died away before the 
glories of His Advent. If they had fully and clearly believed 
Jesus to be God, that faith must have opposed an insurmountable 
barrier to these reactionary yearnings for ‘the things which had 
been destroyed.’ Their attempt to re-introduce circumcision 
into the Galatian Churches was a reflection upon the glory of 
Christ’s finished work, and so, ultimately, upon the transcendent 
dignity of His Person. They knew not, or heeded not, that 
they were members of a kingdom in which circumcision and 


uncircumcision were insignificant accidents, and in which the 


new creation of the soul by the atoning and sacramental grace 
of the Incarnate Saviour was the one matter of vital import >. 
Although they had not denied Christ in terms, yet He had 
become of no effect to them ; and the Apostle sorrowfully pro- 
claimed that as many of them as were justified by the law had 
fallen from grace®. They had practically rejected the plenary 
efficacy of Christ’s saving and re-creating power; they had 
implicitly denied that He was a greater than Moses. Their 
work did not at once perish from among men. For the Juda- 
izing movement bequeathed to the Churches of the Lesser Asia 
many of those theological influences which were felt by later 
ages in the traditional temper of the School of Antioch; while 


b Gal. vi. 15: ἐν yap Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ οὔτε περιτομή τι ἰσχύει ode ἀκροβυστία. 
ἀλλὰ καινὴ κτίσις. Here regeneration is viewed from without, on the side of 


the Divine Energy Which causes it; in Gal. v. 6, where it is equa!ly con- 


trasted with legal circumcision, it is viewed from within the soul, as consisting 
essentially in πίστις δ ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη. 

¢ Gal. v. 4: κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, οἵτινες ἐν νόμῳ δικαιοῦσθε, THs 
χάριτος ἐξεπέσατε. Cf. Ibid. v. 2: ἐὰν περιτέμνησθε, Χριστὸς ὑμᾶς οὐδὲν 
ὠφελήσει. ; 
vi] 


350 Contrasts between the Apostles enhance the force 


outside the Church it was echoed in the long series of Humani- 
tarian mutterings which culminated in the blasphemies of Paulus 
of Samosata. It must thus be admitted to figure conspicuously 
in the intellectual ancestry of the Arian heresy ; and St. Paul, 
not less than St. John, is an apostolical representative of the 

cause and work of Athanasius. oe 
Although the foregoing observations may have taxed your 
indulgent patience somewhat severely, they furnish at best only 
a sample of the evidence which might be brought to illustrate 
the point before us. But enough will have been urged to dispose 
of the suspicion, that St.John’s belief and teaching respecting 
the Divinity of Jesus Christ was only an intellectual or spiritual 
peculiarity of that Apostle. If the form and clothing of St. John’s 
doctrine was peculiar to him, its substance was common to all 
the Apostles of Jesus Christ. Just as the titles and position 
assigned to Jesus Christ in the narrative of the fourth Gospel 
are really in harmony with the powers which He wields and with 
the rights which He claims in the first three Evangelists, so 
St. John’s doctrine of the Eternal Word is substantially one with 
St. Paul’s doctrine of the ‘Image of the Father,’ and with his 
whole description of the redemptive work of Christ, and of the 
attitude of the Christian soul towards Him. St. John’s fuller 
statements do but supply the key to the fervid doxologies of 
St. Peter, and to the profound and significant reverence of 
St. James. Indeed from these Apostles he might seem to differ 
in point of intellectual temper and method, even less than he 
differs from St. Paul. Between St. Paul and St. John how great 
is the contrast! In St. Paul we are struck mainly by the wealth 
of sacred thought; in St. John by its simplicity. St. Paul is 
versatile and discursive; St. John seems to be fixed in the 
entranced bliss of a perpetual intuition. St. Paul is a dialectician 
who teaches us by reasoning; he refutes, he infers, he makes 
quotations, he deduces corollaries, he draws out his demonstra- 
tions more or less at length, he presses impetuously forward, 
reverently bending before the great dogmas which he proclaims, 
yet moving in an atmosphere of perpetual conflict. St. John 
speaks as if the highest life of his soul was the wondering study 
of one vast Apocalypse: he teaches, not by demonstrating truths, 
but by exhibiting his contemplations ; he states what he sees ; 
he repeats the statement, he inverts it, he repeats it once more ; 
he teaches, as it seems, by the exquisite tact of scarcely disguised 
but uninterrupted repetition, which is justified because there is 
no higher attainable truth than the truth which he ee 
LECT. 


of their common witness to Chrest’s Divinity. 351 


St. Paul begins with anthropology, St. John with theology ; 
St. Paul often appeals to theology that he may enforce truths 
of morals; St. John finds the highest moral truth in his most 
abstract theological contemplations. St. Paul usually describes 
the redemptive gift of Christ as Righteousness, as the restoration 
of man to the true law of his being; St.John more naturally 
contemplates it as Life, as the outflow of the Self-existent Being 
of God into His creatures through the quickening Humanity of 
the Incarnate Word. In St. Paul the ethical element predomi- 
nates, in St. John the mystical. St. John is more especially the 
spiritual ancestor of such fathers as was St. Gregory Nazianzen ; 
St. Paul of such as St. Augustine. It may be said, with some 
reservations, that St. Paul is the typical Apostle of Western, as 
St. John is of Eastern Christendom; that the contemplative side 
of the Christian life finds its pattern in St. John, the active in 
St.Paul. Yet striking as are such differences of spiritual method 
and temper, they are found in these great apostles side by side 
with an entire unity of teaching as to the Person of our Lord. 
‘Certainly,’ says Neander, with deep truth, ‘it could be nothing 
merely accidental which induced men so differently constituted 
and trained as Paul and John to connect such an idea [as that 
of Divinity] with the doctrine of the Person of Christ. This 
must have been the result of a higher necessity, which is founded 
in the nature of Christianity, in the power of the impression 
which the Life of Christ had made on the lives of men, in the 
reciprocal relation between the appearance of Christ and the 
archetype that presents itself as an inward revelation of God in 
the depths of the higher self-consciousness. And all this has 
found its point of connexion and its verification in the manner 
in which Christ, the Unerring Witness, expressed His conscious- 
ness of the indwelling of the Divine Essence with Him 4,’ 


ἃ Planting and Training, i. 505, Bohn’s edit. Neander adds: ‘ Had the 
doctrine of Christ’s Eternal Sonship, when it was first promulgated by Paul, 
been altogether new and peculiar to himself, it must have excited much 
opposition as contradicting the common monotheistic belief of the Jews, even 
among the apostles, to whom, from their previous habits, such a speculative 
theosophic element must have remained unknown, unless it had found a 
point of connexion in the lessons received from Christ, and in their Christian 
knowledge.’ Of such opposition, direct and avowed, there is no trace, Cf. 
Meyer. Ev. Joh. p. 49. Die Materie der Lehre war bei Johannes, ehe er in 
' jener gnostischen Form die entsprechende Darstellung fand, das Fundament 
seines Glaubens und der Inhalt seiner Erkenntniss, wie sie bei Paulus und 
bei allen anderen Aposteln es war, welche nicht, (ausser dem Verf. des He- 
braerbriefs) von der Logos-Speculation bertihrt wurden; diese Materie der 


γι] 


352 Lath in a Divine Christ, the strength of Apostles. 


This is indeed the only reasonable explanation of the re- 
markable fact before us, namely, that the persecutor who was 
converted on the road to Damascus, and the disciple who had 
laid on Christ’s breast at supper, were absolutely agreed as to 
the Divine prerogatives of their Master. And if we, my bre- 
thren, have ever been tempted to think that a creed like that 
of St. John befits only a contemplative or mystic life, alien to 
the habits of our age and to the necessities of our position, let 
us turn our eyes towards the great Apostle of the Gentiles. It 
would be difficult, even in this busy day, to rival St. Paul’s 
activity ; and human weakness might well shrink from sharing 
his burden of pain and care. It is given to few to live ‘in 
journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
perils from a man’s own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, 
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the 
sea, in perils among false brethren®,’ for a purely unselfish object. 
Few rise to the heroic scope of a life passed ‘in weariness and 
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness’. But this is certain,—that at 
much lower levels of moral existence, there is much to be done, 
and much, sooner or later, to be endured, which we can only do 
manfully and bear meekly in the strength of the Apostle’s great 
conviction. If St. Paul can suffer the loss of all things that at 
the last he may win Christ, if he can do all things through 
Christ that strengtheneth him, it is because he is consciously 
reaching towards or leaning on the arm of a Saviour Who is God 
as well as Man. And if we, looking onward to the unknown 
changes and chances of this mortal life, and beyond them, to 
death, would fain live and die like Christians, we too must see 
to it that we fold to our inmost souls that central truth of the 
Christian creed which was the strength and joy of the first 
servants of Christ. We too must believe and confess, that that 
Human Friend Whose words enlighten us, Whose Blood cleanses 
us, Whose Sacraments have renewed and even now sustain us, 
is in the truth of His Higher Nature none other and no less 
than the Unerring, the All-merciful, the Almighty God. 


Lehre ist schlechthin auf Christum selbst zuriickzufiihren, dessen Eréffnun- 
gen an seine Jiinger und dessen unmittelbarer Eindruck auf diese (Joh. 1. 14) 
ihnen den Stoff gab, welcher sich spiter die verschiedenen Formen der Dar- 
stellung dienstbar machte. 

e 2Cor. xi. 25, 26. ἢ Ibid. ver. 27. Cf. Ibid. vi. 4-10, and xi. 5 sqq. 


[ LECT. 


LECTURE VII. 


THE HOMOOUSION. 


Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be 


able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the μὰ... ῥ᾽ 
ΤῸ, ἢ δ 


A GREAT doctrine which claims to rule the thought of men and 
to leave its mark upon their conduct, must of necessity encounter 
some rude and probing tests of its vitality as it floats along the 
stream of time. The common speech of mankind, embodying 
the verdict of man’s experience, lays more emphasis upon the 
‘ravages’ than upon the conservative or constructive effects of 
time ;— 
‘Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas, 


Omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus evi 
Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte 2.’ 


The destructive force of time is no less observable in the sphere 
of human ideas and doctrines than in that of material and social 
facts. Time exposes every doctrine or speculation to the action 
of causes which, if more disguised and subtle, are not less cer- 
tainly at work than those which threaten political systems or 
works of art with decay and dissolution. 

A doctrine is liable to suffer with the lapse of time from 
without and from within. From within it is exposed to the risk 
of decomposition by analysis. When once it has been launched — 
into the ocean of our public intellectual life, it is forthwith sub- 
jected, as a condition of its acceptance, to the play and scrutiny 
of many and variously ‘constituted minds. The several ingre- 
dients which constitute it, the primary truths to which it appeals 


ὁ Ovid, Met. xv. 234. 
vit | A a 


354 The vitality of a doctrine, how tested. 


and upon which it ultimately reposes, are separately and con- 
stantly examined. It may be that certain elements of the doc- 
trine, essential to its perfect representation, are rejected altogether. 
It may be that all its constitutive elements are retained, while the 
proportions in which they are blended are radically altered. It 
may be that an impulse is’ given to some active intellectual sol- 
vent, hitherto dormant, but from the first latent in the constitu- 
tion of the doctrine, and likely, according to any ordinary human 
estimate, to break it up. Or some point of attraction between 
the doctrine and a threatening philosophy outside it is discovered 
and insisted on; and the philosophy, in a patronizing spirit, 
proposes to meet the doctrine half way, and to ratify one half of 
it if the other may be abandoned. Or some subtle intellectual 
poison is injected into the doctrine; and while men imagine that 
they are only adapting it to the temper of an age, or to the 
demands of a line of thought, its glow and beauty are forfeited, 
or its very life and heart are eaten out. Then for awhile its 
shell or its skeleton lies neglected by the side of the great highway 
of thought ; until at length some one of those adventurers who 
in every age devote themselves to the manufacture of eclectic 
systems, assigns to the intellectual fossil a place of honour in his 
private museum, side by side with the remains of other extinct 

theories, to which in its lifetime it was fundamentally opposed. 
But even if a doctrine be sufficiently compact and strong to 
resist internal decomposition, it must in any case be prepared to 
encounter the shock of opposition from without. To no doctrine 
is it given to be absolutely inoffensive ; and therefore sooner or 
later every doctrine is opposed. Every doctrine, however frail 
and insignificant it may be, provokes attacks by the mere fact of 
its existence. It challenges a certain measure of attention which 
is coveted by some other doctrines. It takes up a certain amount 
of mental room which other doctrines would fain appropriate, if 
indeed it does not jostle inconveniently against them, or contra- 
dict them outright. Thus it rouses against itself resentment, or, 
at any rate, opposition ; and this opposition is reinforced by an 
appetite which is shared in by those who hold the opposed doc- 
trine no less than by those who oppose it. The craving for 
novelty is by no means peculiar to quickwitted races like the Athe- 
nians of the apostolical age or the French of our own day. It is 
profoundly and universally human; and it enters into our appre- 
ciation of subject-matters the most various. Novelty confers a 
charm upon high efforts of thought and enquiry as well as upon 
works of art or of imagination, or even upon fashions in rues 
LECT. 


~ 


i 
7 


Lhe vitality of a doctrine, how tested. 355 


ment orin dress. To treat this yearning for novelty as though it 
were only a vicious frivolity is to overlook its profound signifi- 
cance. For, even in its lowest and unloveliest forms, it is a living 
and perpetual witness to the original nobility of the soul of man. 
Τῦ is the restlessness of a desire which One Being alone can 
satisfy ; it reminds us that the Infinite One has made us for 
Himself, and that no object, person, or doctrine that is merely 
finite and earthly, can take His place in our heart and thought, 
and bid us finally be still. And therefore as man passes through 
life on his short and rapid pilgrimage, unless his eye be fixed on 
that treasure in heaven which ‘ neither moth nor rust doth cor- 
rupt,’ he is of necessity the very slave of novelty. Each candi- 
date for his admiration wins from him, it may be, a passing 
glance of approval ; but, unsatisfied at heart, he is ever seeking 
for some new stimulant to his evanescent sympathies. He casts 
to the winds the faded flower which he had but lately stooped to 
gather with such eager enthusiasm ; he buries beneath the waves 
the useless pebble which, when his eye first detected it sparkling 
on the shore, had yielded him a moment of such bright. enjoy- 
ment. Nothing human can insure its life against the attractions 
of something more recent than itself in point of origin; no 
doctrine of earthly mould can hope to escape the sentence of 
superannuation when it is fairly confronted with the intellectual 
creations of an age later than its own. A human doctrine may 
live for a few years, or it may live for centuries. Its duration will 
depend partly upon the amount of absolute truth which it em- 
bodies, and partly upon the strength of the rivals with which it 
is brought into competition. But it cannot always satisfy the 
appetite for novelty ; its day of extinction can only be deferred. 


3, 
οὐκ ἔχω προσεικάσαι, 
πάντ᾽ ἐπισταθμώμενος, uy 
\ , : : 
πλὴν Διὸς, εἰ τὸ μάταν ἀπὸ φροντίδος ἄχθος 
΄ Υ͂ 
χρὴ βαλεῖν ἐτητύμως. 
32.) of , > 4 
οὐδ᾽ ὅστις πάροιθεν ἦν μέγας, 
παμμάχῳ θράσει βρύων, 
οὐδὲν ἂν λέξαι πρὶν ὧν, 
a δ᾽ » 23.» ἢ 
ὃς δ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἔφυ, τρια 
a 4 
κτῆρος οἴχεται τυχών Ὁ, 


So it must ever fare with a religious dogma of purely hu- 
man authorship. In obedience to the lapse of time it must of 


b Aisch. Ag. 163-171. 
VII | Aa2 


356 Doctrine of Christ’s Divinity, how tested. 


necessity be modified, corrupted, revolutionized, and then yield 
to some stronger successor. 


‘Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be.’ 


This is the true voice of human speculation on Divine things, 
conscious that it is human, conscious of its weakness, and mind- 
ful of its past and ever-accumulating experience. He Only, 
‘with Whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning,’ can 
be the Author of a really unchanging doctrine ; and, as a matter 
of historical fact, ‘His truth endureth from generation to genera- 
tion.’ 

When the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity entered into the 
world of human thought, it was not screened from the operation. 
of the antagonistic and dissolvent influences which have just 
been noticed. It was confronted with the passion for novelty 
beneath the eyes of the apostles themselves. The passion for 
novelty at Colossze appears to have combined a licentious fertility 
of the religious imagination with a taste for such cosmical specu- 
lations as were current in that age; while in the Galatian 
Churches it took the form of a return to the discarded cere- 
monial of the Jewish law. In both cases the novel theory was 
opposed to the apostolical account of our Lord’s personal dig- 
nity ; and in another generation the wild imaginings of a Basilides 
or of a Valentinus illustrated the attractive force of a new 
fashion in Christological speculation still more powerfully. 
Somewhat later the dialectical method of the Alexandrian 
writers subjected the doctrine to acute internal analysis, while 
the neo-Platonic philosophy brought a powerful intellectual 
sympathy to bear upon it, which, as an absorbing or distorting 
influence, might well have been fatal to a human dogma. 
Lastly, the doctrine was directly opposed by a long line of 
Humanitarian teachers, reaching, with but few intermissions, 
from the Ebionitic period to the Arian. 

In the history of the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity the Arian 
heresy was the climax of difficulty and of triumph ; it tested the 
doctrine at one and the same time in each of the three modes 
which have been noticed. Arianism was ostentatiously anxious 
to appear to be an original speculation, and accordingly it 
taunted the Nicene fathers with their intellectual poverty; it 
branded them as ἀφελεῖς καὶ ἰδιῶται because they adhered to the 
ground of handing on simply what they had received. Its dia- 
lectical method was inherited from the Alexandrian eclectic 

[ LECT. 


Effects of Opposition. | 457 


school ; and by this method, as well as by the assumption that 
certain philosophical placita were granted, Arianism endeavoured 
to kill the doctrine from within by a destructive analysis. And 
it need scarcely be added that Arianism inherited and intensified 
the direct opposition which had been offered to the doctrine by 
earlier heresies ; Arianism is immortalized, however ingloriously, 
in those sufferings, in those struggles, in those victories of the 
great Athanasius, of which its own bitter hostility to our Lord’s 
Essential Godhead was the immediate cause. 

That such a doctrine as our Lord’s Divinity should be thus 
opposed was not unnatural. It is in itself so startling, so awful ; 
it endows the man who honestly and intelligently believes it 
with a conception of the worth and drift of Christianity, so 
altogether unique; it is so utterly intolerable if you admit a 
suspicion of its being false; it is so necessarily exacting when > 
once you have recognised it as true; it makes such large and 
immediate demands, not merely upon the reason and the imagi- 
nation, but also upon the affections and the will; that a spe- 
cific opposition to it, as distinct from a professed general 
opposition to the religion of which it is the very heart and soul, 
is only what might have been expected. Certainly, such a doc- 
trine could not at first bring peace on earth ; rather it could not 
but bring division. It could not but divide families, cities, 
nations, continents ; it could not but arm against itself the edge 
and point of every weapon that might be forged or whetted by 
the ingenuity of a passionate animosity. It could not but have 
collapsed utterly and vanished away when confronted with the 
heat of opposition which it provoked, had it not descended from 
the Source of Truth, had it not reposed upon an absolute and 
indestructible basis. The Arian controversy broke upon it as an 
intellectual storm, the violence of which must have shattered any 
human theory. But when the storm had spent itself, the doc- 
trine emerged from the conciliar decisions of the fourth century 
as luminous and perfect as it had been when it was proclaimed 
by St. Paul and St.John. Resistance does but strengthen truth 
which it cannot overthrow: and when the doctrine had defied 
the craving for novelty, the disintegrating force of hostile 
analysis, and the vehement onslaught of passionate denunciation, 
it was seen to be vitally unlike those philosophical speculations 
which might have been confused with it by a superficial observer. 
Its exact area was unaltered; it now involved and excluded pre- 
cisely what it had excluded and involved from the first. But 
a it was to be held with a clearer recognition of its real 
VII 


358 Lriumph of the Doctrine. The Homoousion. 


frontier, and with a stronger sense of the necessity for insisting _ 
upon that recognition. In the Homoousion, after such hesitation 
as found expression at Antioch, the Church felt that she had 
lighted upon a symbol practically adapted to tell forth the truth 
that never had been absent from her heart and mind, and withal, 
capable of resisting the intellectual solvents which had seemed to 
threaten that truth with extinction. The Homoousion did not 
change, it protected the doctrine. It clothed the doctrine in a 
vesture of language which rendered it intelligible to a new world 
of thought while preserving its strict unchanging identity. It 
translated the apostolical symbols of the Image and the Word of 
God into a Platonic equivalent ; and it remains with us to this 
hour, in the very heart of our Creed, as the complete assertion 
of Christ’s absolute oneness with the Essence of Deity, as the 
monument which records the greatest effort and the greatest 
defeat of its antagonist error, as the guarantee that the victorious 
truth maintains and will maintain an unshaken empire over the 
thought of Christendom. 

We are all sufficiently familiar with the line of criticism to 
which such a formula as the Homoousion is exposed in our day 
and generation. A contrast is depicted and insisted upon with 
more vehemence than accuracy, between the unfixed popular 
faith of Christians in the first age of the Church and the keen 
theological temper of the fourth century. It is said that the 
Church’s earliest faith was unformed, simple, vague, too full of 
childlike wonder to analyse itself, too indeterminate to satisfy 
the requirements of a formalized theology. It is asserted that at 
Alexandria the Church learned how to fix her creed in precise, 
rigid, exclusive moulds; that she there gradually crystallized 
what had once been fluid, and cramped and fettered what had 
before been free. And it is insinuated that in this process, 
whereby the fresh faith of the infant Church ‘ was hardened into 
the creed of the Church of the Councils,’ there was some risk, or 
more than risk, of an alteration or enlargement of the original 
faith. ‘How do you know,’ men ask, ‘that the formulary which 
asserts Christ’s Consubstantiality with the Father is really ex- 
pressive of the simple faith in which the first Christians lived 
and died? Do not probabilities point the other way? Is it not 
likely that when this effort was made to fix the expression of 
the faith in an unchanging symbol, there was a simultaneous 
growth, however unsuspected and unrecognised, in the subject- 
matter of the faith expressed? May not the hopes and feelings 
of a passionate devotion, as well as the inferential say σε: 

' LECT. 


LTheworshipof Christawrtness to the Homoousion. 359 


an impetuous logic, have contributed something to fill up the 
outline and to enhance the significance of the original and revealed 
germ of truth? May not the Creed of Nicea be thus in reality 
a creed distinct from, if not indeed more extensive than, .the 
creed of the apostolic age?’ Such is the substance of many a 
whispered question, or of many a confident assertion, which we 
hear around us; and it is necessary to enquire, whether the 
admitted difference of form between the apostolic and Nicene 
statements does really, or only in appearance, involve a deeper 
difference—a difference in the object of faith. 

I. Let it then be considered that a belief may be professed 
either by stating it in terms, or by acting in a manner which 
necessarily implies that you hold it. A man may profess a creed 
with which his life is at variance ; but he may also live a creed, 
if I may so speak, which he has not the desire or the skill to 
put into exact words. There is no moral difference between the 
sincere expression of a conviction in language, and its consistent 
reflection in action. There is, for example, no difference be- 
tween my saying that a given person is not to be relied upon 
when dealing with money matters, and my pointedly declining 
to act with him on this particular trust, when I am asked to 
do so. It is not necessary that I should express my complete 
opinion of his character, until I am obliged to express it. I 
content myself with acting in the only manner which is prudent 
under the circumstances. Meanwhile my line of action speaks 
for itself; its meaning is evident to all who are practically 
interested in the subject. Until Iam challenged for an expla- 
nation ; until the assumption upon which I act is denied ; there 
is no necessity for my putting into words an opinion which has 
already been stated in the language of action and with such 
unmistakeable decision. 

Did then the ante-Nicene Church as a whole—did its con- 
gregations of worshippers as well as its councils of divines— 
did its poor, its young, its unlettered multitudes, as well as its 
saints and doctors, so act and speak as to imply a belief that 
Jesus Christ is actually God? 

A question such as this may at first sight seem to be difficult 
to answer, by reason of the one-sidedness and caprice of history. 
History for the most part concerns herself with the actions and 
opinions of the great and the distinguished, that is to say, of 
the few. Incidentally, or on particular occasions, she may glance 
at what passes beyond the region of courts and battle-fields ; 
ona is not her wont to enable us readily to ascertain the real 
vil 


360 Fesus Christ not only ‘admired’ but ‘adored, 


currents of thought and feeling which have swayed the minds of 
multitudes in a distant age. | 

Such at any rate is the rule with secular history ; but the 
genius of the Church of Christ is of a nature to limit the force 


of the observation. In her eyes, the interests of the many, the 


customs, the deeds, the sufferings of the illiterate and of the 
poor, are, to say the least, not less precious and noteworthy than 
those of kings and prelates. For the standard of aristocracy 
within her borders is not an intellectual or a social, but a 
moral standard; and her Founder has put the highest honour not 
upon those who rule and are of reputation, but upon those who 
serve and are unknown. ‘The history of the Christian Church 
does therefore serve to illustrate the point before us; and it 
proves the belief of Christian people in the Godhead of Jesus by 
its witness to the early and universal practice of adoring Him. 
The early Christian Church did not content herself with 
‘admiring’ Jesus Christ. She adored Him. She approached 
His Glorious Person with that very tribute of prayer, of self- 
prostration, of self-surrender, by which all serious Theists, 
whether Christian or non-Christian, are accustomed to express 
their felt relationship as creatures to the Almighty Creator. 
For as yet it was not supposed that a higher and truer know- 
ledge of the Infinite God would lead man to abandon the sense 
and the expression of complete dependence upon Him and of 
unmeasured indebtedness to Him, which befits a reasonable 
creature whom God has made, and whom God owns and can 


dispose of, when such a creature is dealing with God. As yet 


it was not imagined that this bearing would or could be ex- 
changed for the more easy demeanour of an equal, or of one 
deeming himself scarcely less than an equal, who is intelligently 
appreciating the existence of a remarkably wise and powerful 
Being, entitled by His activities to a very large share of specu- 
lative attention®. The Church simply adored God; and she 


ς Cf. Lecky, History of Rationalism, i. 309. Contrasting the Christian 
belief in a God Who can work miracles with the ‘scientific’ belief in a 
god who is the slave of ‘law,’ Mr. Lecky remarks, that the former ‘ pre- 
disposes us most to prayer,’ the latter to ‘reverence and admiration,’ 
Here the antithesis between ‘reverence’ and ‘prayer’ seems to imply that 
the latter word is used in the narrow sense of petition for specific blessings, 
instead of in the wider sense which embraces the whole compass of the soul’s 
devotional activity, and among other things, adoration. Still, if Mr. Lecky 
had meant to include under ‘ reverence’ anything higher than we yield to the 
highest forms of human greatness, he would scarcely have coupled it with 
‘admiration.’ 


[ LECT. Ὁ 


ite δ τις 


‘Admiration’ and ‘ Adoration? 361 


ο΄. adored Jesus Christ, as believing Him to be God. Nor did she 
_ destroy the significance of this act by conceiving that admi- 
ration differs from adoration only in degree; that a sincere 
admiration is practically equivalent to adoration ; that adoration 
after all is only admiration raised to the height of an en- 
thusiasm. 

You will not deem it altogether unnecessary, under our 
present intellectual circumstances, to consider for a moment 
whether this representation of the relationship between admi- 
ration and adoration be strictly accurate. So far indeed is 
this from being the case, that adoration and admiration are at 
one and the same moment and with reference to a single object, 
mutually exclusive of each other. Certainly, in the strained 
and exaggerated language of poetry or of passion, you may 
speak of adoring that on which you lavish an unlimited ad- 
miration. But the common sense and judgment of men refuses 
to regard admiration as an embryo form of adoration, or as 
other than a fundamentally distinct species of spiritual activity. 
Adoration may be an intensified reverence, but it certainly is 
not an intensified admiration. The difference between admi- 
ration and adoration is observable in the difference of their 
respective objects ; and that difference is immeasurable. For, 
speaking strictly, we admire the finite; we adore the Infinite. 
Why is this? It is because admiration requires a certain as- 
sumption of equality with the object admired, an assumption of 
ideal, if not of literal equality4, Admiration such as is here 
in question is not a vague unregulated wonder ; it involves a 
judgment ; it is a form of criticism. And since it is a criticism, 
it consists in our internally referring the object which we ad- 
mire to a criterion. That criterion is an ideal of our own, 
and the act by which we compare the admired object with the 
ideal is our own act. We may have borrowed the ideal from 
another ; and we do not for a moment suppose that we our- 
selves could give it perfect expression, or even could produce a 
rival to the object which commands our critical admiration. 
Yet, after all, the ideal is before us ; it is, by right of possession, 
our own. We take credit to ourselves for possessing it, and for 
comparing the object before us with it; nay, we identify our- 


ἃ It is on this account that the apotheosis of men involves the capital sin 
of pride in those who decree or sanction not less than in those who accept it. 
_The worshipper is himself the ‘fountain of honour ;’ and in ‘deifying’ a 
fellow-creature, he deifies human nature, and so by implication himself. 
Wisd. xiv. 20; Acts xii. 22, 23 ; xiv. 11-15; xxviii. 6; Rom. i. 23. 
vir | 


362 ‘Admiration’ and ‘ Adoration, 


selves more or less with this ideal when we compare it with 
the object before us. When you, my brethren, express your 
admiration of a good painting, you do not mean to assert that 
you yourselves could have painted it. But you do imply that 
you have before your mind an ideal of what a good painting 
should be, and that you are able to form an opinion as to the 
correspondence of a particular work of art with that ideal. 
Thus it is that, whether justifiably or not, your admiration of the 
painting has the double character of self-appreciation and of 
patronage. Indeed it may be questioned whether as art-critics, 
intent upon the beauty of your ideal, you are not much more 
disposed secretly to claim for yourselves a share of merit than 
would have been the case if you had been the artist himself 
whose success you consent to admire ; since the artist, we may 
be sure, is at least conscious of some measure of failure, and 
is humbled, if not depressed, by a sense of the difficulty of trans- 
lating his ideal into reality, by the anxieties and struggles which 
always accompany the process of production. 

Now this element of self-esteem, or at any rate of approving 
reflection upon self, which enters so penetratingly into admira- 
tion, is utterly incompatible with the existence of genuine 
adoration. For adoration is no mere prostration of the body; 
it is a prostration of the soul. It is reverence carried to the 
highest point of possible exaggeration. It is mental self-annihil- 
ation before a Greatness Which utterly transcends all human 
and finite standards. In That Presence self knows that it has 
neither plea nor right to any consideration ; it is overwhelmed 
by the sense of its utter insignificance. The adoring soul bends 
thought and heart and will before the footstool of the One Self- 
existing, All-creating, All-upholding Being; the soul wills to 
be as nothing before Him, or to exist only that it may recognise 
His Glory as altogether surpassing its words and thoughts. If 
any one element of adoration be its most prominent character- 
istic, it is this heartfelt uncompromising renunciation of the 
claims of self. 

Certainly admiration may lead up to adoration; but then 
real admiration dies away when its object is seen to be entitled 
to something higher than and distinct from it. Admiration 
ceases when it has perceived that its Object altogether trans- 
cends any standard of excellence or beauty with which man can 
compare Him. Admiration may be the ladder by which we 
mount to adoration; but it is useless, or rather it is an im- 
pertinence, when adoration has been reached. very Ta of 

LECT. 


ELE 25 RL FEO CRE LH Oma) ἢ. ETE OPE RAO STERN YAR RE ON oe. ERE RT SER wm te! 
2 — a; ve ἐμὰ a γ᾿ ies 


The Adoration of Fesus coeval with the Church. 363 


intelligence and modesty meets in life with many objects which 


eall for his free and sincere admiration, and he himself gains 
both morally and intellectually by answering to such a call. But 
while the objects of human admiration are as various as the 
minds and tastes of men, 


‘Denique non omnes eadem mirantur amantque,’ 


One Only Being can be rightfully adored. To ‘admire’ God 
would involve an irreverence only equal to the impiety of ador- 
ing a fellow-creature. It would be as reasonable to pay Divine 
worship to our every-day associates, as to substitute for that 
incommunicable honour which is due to the Most High some 
one of the tranquil and self-satisfied forms of a favourable 
notice with which we greet accomplishments or excellence in 
our fellow-men. ‘When I saw Him,’ says St. John, speaking 
of Jesus in His glory, ‘I fell at His feet as deade.’ That was 
something more than admiration, even the most enthusiastic ; 
it was an act, in which self had no part ; it was an act of adoration. 

If Jesus Christ had been only a morally perfect Man, He 
would have been entitled to the highest human admiration ; 
although it may be questioned, as we have seen, whether He can 
be deemed morally perfect if He is in reality only human. But 
the historical fact before us is, that from the earliest age of 
Christianity, Jesus Christ has been adored as God. This adora- 
tion was not yielded to Him in consequence of the persuasions 
of theologians who had pronounced Him to be a Divine Person. 
It had nothing in common with the fulsome and servile insin- 
cerities which ever and anon rose like incense around the 
throne of some pagan Cesar who had received the equivocal 
honour of an apotheosis. It was not the product of a spiritual 
fascination, too subtle or too strong to be analyzed by those who 
felt its power, but easy of explanation to a later age. You can- 
not trace the stages of its progressive development. You cannot 
name the time at which it was regarded only as a pious custom 
or luxury, and then mark this off from.a later period when it had 
become, in the judgment of Christians, an imperious Christian 
duty. Never was the adoration of Jesus protested against in the 
Church as a novelty, derogatory to the honour and claims of God. 
Never was there an age when Jesus was only ‘invoked’ as if He 
had been an interceding saint, by those who had not yet learned 


© Rev. i. 17: ὅτε εἶδον αὐτὸν, ἔπεσα πρὸς τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ ὡς νεκρός. 
VII | 


- 


364 Worship of Fesus during His Earthly Life. 


to prostrate themselves before His throne as the throne of the 
Omnipotent and the Eternal. In vain will you endeavour to 
establish a parallel between the adoration of Jesus and some 
modern ‘ devotion, unknown to the early days of Christendom, 
but now popularized largely in portions of the Christian Church ; 
since the adoration of Jesus is as ancient as Christianity. Jesus 
has been ever adored on the score of His Divine Personality, 


of Which this tribute of adoration is not merely a legitimate but 


a necessary acknowledgment. 


1. During the days of His earthly life our Lord was surrounded — 


by acts of homage, ranging, as it might seem, so far as the 
intentions of those who offered them were concerned, from the 
wonted forms of Eastern courtesy up to the most direct and 
conscious acts of Divine worship. As an Infant, He was ‘ wor- 
shipped’ by the Eastern sagesf; and during His ministry He 
constantly received and welcomed acts and words expressive of 
an intense devotion to His Sacred Person on the part of those 
who sought or who had received from Him some supernatural 
aid or blessing. The leper worshipped Him, crying out, ‘ Lord, 
if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me cleans.’ Jairus worshipped 
Him, saying, ‘My daughter is even now dead: but come and 
lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live.’ The mother 
of Zebedee’s children came near to Him, worshipping Him, 
and asking Him to bestow upon her sons the first places of 
honour in His kingdomi, The woman of Canaan, whose 
daughter was ‘grievously vexed with a devil,’ ‘came and wor- 
shipped Him, saying, Lord, help me.’ The father of the poor 
lunatic, who met Jesus as He descended from the Mount of 
Transfiguration, ‘came, kneeling down to Him, and saying, 
Lord, have mercy on my son!},’ These are instances of worship 
accompanying prayers for special mercies. And did not the 
dying thief offer at least a true inward worship to Jesus Cru- 
eified, along with the words, ‘Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom ™?’ 

f St. Matt. ii. 11: πεσόντες προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ. 

& Ibid. viii. 2: Κύριε, ἐὰν θέλῃς, δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι. 

h [bid. ix. 18: προσεκύνει αὐτῷ, λέγων, “Ὅτι ἣ θυγάτηρ μου ἄρτι ἐτελεύ- 
τησεν᾽ ἀλλὰ ἐλθὼν ἐπίθες τὴν χεῖρά σου ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν, καὶ ζήσεται. 

i Ibid. xx. 20: προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ ἣ μήτηρ τῶν υἱῶν Ζεβεδαίου μετὰ τῶν υἱῶν 
αὐτῆς, προσκυνοῦσα καὶ αἰτοῦσά τι παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ. 

k Tbid. χν. 25 : 4 δὲ ἐλθοῦσα προσεκύνει αὐτῷ, λέγουσα, “ Κύριε βοήθει por.’ 

1 [bid. xvii. 14, 15: προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ ἄνθρωπος γονυπετῶν αὐτῷ, καὶ λέγων, 
« Κύριε, ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν." 

m §t. Luke xxiii. 42: ἔλεγε τῷ Ἰησοῦ, “Μνήσθητί μου, Κύριε, ὅταν ἔλθῃς ἐν 
τῇ βασιλείᾳ σου." 3 

[ LECT. 


rae 


κὰδ. ἘΙ ΑΝ hes τὸν 5. ὃν ὦ. 


πὸ PORE μα ον λιν πρὸ αὶ Ey LOO OSE RC ὧν ERT Ὁ ΜΑΣ EE AT WT BLA δῆς τα em ᾿ τα. εἰ ἀπο»: 
πώ. i ΕΝ ἰνῶν i nai r F oh 


ΕΝ. 
H 

& = 
ΕΓ 
᾿Ἷ 
a. 
ξ 


[ΡΥ ἘΝ τ RDS LT 


ΕΣ ΣΤΟΥΣ ΧΟ ΤΙ ΤΥ ΟΣ ΣΡ ΤΥ ΧΟΥ͂Σ ΤΩΝ ΤΟΥΣ ΣΝ TR ΤΟ ΡῈ οι ΟῚ 


Worship of Fesus during Fis Earthly Life. 365 


At other times such visible worship of our Saviour was an 
act of acknowledgment or of thanksgiving for mercies received. 
Thus it was with the grateful Samaritan leper, who, ‘when he 
saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice 
glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him 
thanks®.’ Thus it was when Jesus had appeared walking on 
the sea and had quieted the storm, and ‘they that were in the 
ship came and worshipped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art 
the Son of God.’ Thus too was it after the miraculous 
draught of fishes, that St. Peter, astonished at the greatness of 
the miracle, ‘fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; 
for I am a sinful man, Ὁ Lord®.’ Thus the penitent, ‘when 
she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought 
an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind 
Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did 
wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and 
anointed them with the ointment P.’ Thus again when the man 
born blind confesses his faith in ‘the Son of God,’ he aecompa- 
nies it by an undoubted act of adoration. ‘And he said, Lord, 
I believe. And He worshipped Him4.’ Thus the holy women, 
when the Risen ‘Jesus met them, saying, “All hail,” came... 
and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him". Thus 
apparently Mary of Magdala, in her deep devotion, had motioned 
to embrace His feet in the garden, when Jesus bade her ‘Touch 
Me nots.’ Thus the eleven disciples met our Lord by appoint- 
ment on a mountain in Galilee, and ‘when they saw Him,’ as it 


n St. Luke xvii. 15, 16: εἷς δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν, ἰδὼν ὅτι ἰάθη, ὑπέστρεψε, μετὰ 
φωνῆς μεγάλης δοξάζων τὸν Θεόν" καὶ ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον παρὰ τοὺς πόδας 
αὑτοῦ, εὐχαριστῶν αὐτῷ. 

ο St. Matt. xiv. 32, 33: ἐκόπασεν 6 ἄνεμος" οἱ δὲ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ ἐλθόντες 
προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ, λέγοντες, “᾿Αληθῶς Θεοῦ Ὑἱὸς εἶ. St. Luke v. 8: ἰδὼν δὲ 
Σίμων Πέτρος προσέπεσε τοῖς γόνασι τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ, λέγων, "Ἔξελθε ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι 
ἀνὴρ ἁμαρτωλός εἶμι, Κύριε." 

P St. Luke vii. 37, 38 : κομίσασα ἀλάβαστρον μύρου, καὶ στᾶσα παρὰ τοὺς 
πόδας αὐτοῦ ὀπίσω κλαίουσα, , ἤρξατο βρέχειν. τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ τοῖς δάκρυσι, καὶ. 
ταῖς θριξὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμασσε, καὶ κατεφίλει τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ, καὶ 
ἤλειφε τῷ μύρῳ. These actions were expressive of a passionate devotion ; 
they had no object beyond expressing it. 

a St. John ix. 35-38: ἤκουσεν δ᾽ Ιησοῦς ὅτι ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω" καὶ εὑρὼν 
αὐτὸν, εἶπεν αὐτῷ, ‘Sv πιστεύεις εἰς τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ ; ᾿Απεκρίθη ἐκεῖνος καὶ 
εἶπε, ‘Tis ἐστι, Κύριε, ἵνα πιστεύσω εἰς αὐτόν ;" Εἶπε δὲ hepa, 6 ᾿Ιησοῦς, ‘Kah 
icbpoxas αὐτὸν, καὶ ὃ λαλῶν μετὰ σοῦ, ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν.ἢ δὲ ἔφη, “ Πιστεύω, 
Κύριε" καὶ προσεκύνησεν αὐτῷ. 

τ St. Matt. xxviii. g: 6 Ἰησοῦς ἀπήντησεν αὐταῖς, λέγων, “ Χαίρετε. Ai δὲ 
προσελθοῦσαι ἐκράτησαν αὐτοῦ τοὺς πόδας, καὶ προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ. 


5. St. John xx. 17. 
Vit | 


366 Gradations in the worship offered to Fesus. 


would seem, in their joy and fear, ‘they worshipped Him t,’ 
Thus, pre-eminently, St. Thomas uses the language of adoration, 
although it is not said to have been accompanied by any corres- 
ponding outward act. When, in reproof for his scepticism, he had 
been bidden to probe the Wounds of Jesus, he burst forth into 
the adoring confession, ‘My Lord and my God,’ Thus, when 
the Ascending Jesus was being borne upwards into heaven, the 
disciples, as if thanking Him for His great glory, worshipped 
Him ; and then ‘returned to Jerusalem with great joy *.’ 

It may be that in some of these instances the ‘ worship’ paid 
to Jesus did not express more than a profound reverence. 
Sometimes He was worshipped as a Superhuman Person, wield- 
ing superhuman powers; sometimes He was worshipped by 
those who instinctively felt His moral majesty, which forced 
them, they knew not how, upon their knees. But if He had 
been only a ‘good man,’ He must have checked such worship ¥. 
He had Himself re-affirmed the foundation-law of the religion 
of Israel: ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him 


t St. Matt. xxviii. 17: καὶ ἰδόντες αὐτὸν, προσεκύνησαν αὑτῷ" of δὲ ἐδίστα- 
σαν. If some doubted, the worship offered by the rest may be presumed to 
have been a very deliberate act. 

u St. John xx. 28: καὶ ἀπεκρίθη ὃ Θωμᾶς, καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, “Ὃ Κύριός μου 
καὶ ὃ Θεός μου’ Against the attempt of Theodore of Mopsuestia and others 
to resolve this into an ejaculation addressed to the Father, see Alford in loc.; 
Pye Smith on Messiah, ii. 53. The αὐτῷ is of itself decisive. 

x St. Luke xxiv. 51, 52: καὶ ἀνεφέρετο eis τὸν οὐρανόν. καὶ αὐτοὶ προσ- 
κυνήσαντες αὐτὺν, ὑπέστρεψαν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ μετὰ χαρᾶς μεγάλης. 

y This consideration is remarkably overlooked by Channing, who might 
have been expected to feel its force. Channing is ‘sure’ that ‘the worship 
paid to Christ during His public ministry. was rendered to Him only as a 
Divine Messenger.’ But prophets and Apostles were messengers from God. 
Why were they not worshipped? Channing insists further that such titles 
as ‘Son of David,’ shew that these who used them had no thought of Christ’s 
being ‘the Self-existent Infinite Divinity” It may be true that the full 
truth of His Divine Nature was not known to these first worshippers ; but 
it does not hold good that a particular title employed in prayer exhausts the 
idea which the petitioner has formed of the Person whom he addresses. 
Above all Channing urges the indifference of the Jews ‘to the frequent 
prostrations of men before Jesus.’ He thinks this indifference unintelligible 
on the supposition of their believing such prostrations to involve the payment 
of divine honours. That many of these prostrations were not designed to 
involve anything so definite is freely conceded. That the Jews suspected 
the intention to honour Christ’s Divinity in none of them would not prove 
that none of them were designed to honour It. The Jews were not present 
at the confession of St. Thomas after the Resurrection ; but there is no 
reasonable room for questioning either the devotional purpose or the theo- 
logical force of the Apostle’s exclamation, ‘My Lord and my God.’ But 
see Channing Works, ii. 194. 

[ LECT. 


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Adoration of Fesus Glorified. 367 


only shalt thou serve.’ Yet he never hints that danger lurked 
in this prostration of hearts and wills before Himself; He wel- 
comes, by a tacit approval, this profound homage of which He 
is the Object. His rebuke to the rich young man implies, not 
that He himself had no real claim to be called ‘Good Master,’ 
but that such a title, in the mouth of the person before Him, 
was an unmeaning compliment. He seems to invite prayer 
to Himself, even for the highest spiritual blessings, in such 
words as those which He addressed to the woman of Samaria : 
‘If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith unto 
thee, Give me to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and 
He would have given thee living water®.’ He predicts indeed 
a time when the spiritual curiosity of His disciples would be 
satisfied in the joy of perfectly possessing Him; but He nowhere 
hints that He would Himself cease to receive their prayers >. 
He claims all the varied homage which the sons of men, in 
their want and fulness, in their joy and sorrow, may rightfully 
and profitably pay to the Eternal Father; all men are to 
‘honour the Son even as they honour the Father.’ 

2. Certain it is that no sooner had Christ been lifted up from 
the earth, in death and in glory, than He forthwith began 
to draw all men unto Him’. This attraction expressed itself, 
not merely in an assent to His teaching, but in the worship 
of His Person. No sooner had He ascended to His throne than 
there burst upwards from the heart of His Church a tide 
of adoration which has only become wider and deeper with 
the lapse of time. In the first days of the Church, Christians 
were known as ‘those who called upon the Name of Jesus 
Christ4.’ Prayer to Jesus Christ, so far from being a devotional 


z St. Matt. iv. 10. 
@ St. John iv. 10: εἰ ἤδεις τὴν δωρεὰν. τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὃ λέγων σοι, 
“ Δός μοι πιεῖν, σὺ ἂν ἤ ᾿ἤτησας αὐτὸν, καὶ ἔδωκεν ἄν σοι ὕδωρ (ay. 

. Πα, Xvi. 22: πάλιν δὲ ὄψομαι ὑμᾶς, καὶ χαρήσεται ὑ ὑμῶν n καρδία, καὶ τὴν 
χαρὰν ὑμῶν οὐδεὶς αἴρει ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν" καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐμὲ οὐκ ἐρωτήσετε 
οὐδέν. Here ἐρωτήσετε clearly means ‘ question.’ 

ὁ Thbid. xii. 32. 

ἃ Thus Ananias pleads to our Lord that Saul ‘hath authority from the 
chief priests to bind πάντας τοὺς ἐπικαλουμένους τὸ ὄνομά cov.’ (Acts ix. 14.) 
On St. Paul’s first preaching in Jerusalem, ‘All that heard him were amazed, 
and said, Is not this he that destroyed in Jerusalem τοὺς ἐπικαλουμένους 
τὸ ὄνομα τοῦτο; (Ibid. ver. 21.) Thus the title was applied to Christians 
both by themselves and by Jews outside the Church. In after years St. Paul 
inserts it at the beginning of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, which 
is addressed to the Church of God at Corinth σὺν πᾶσ! rots ἐπικαλουμένοις Td 
ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ἰησοῦ. Χριστοῦ. (1 Cor. i. 2.) The expression is 
Vil | 


368 Early apostohc prayers to Jesus Glorified. 


eccentricity, was the universal practice of Christians; it was 
the act of devotion which specially characterized a Christian. 
It would seem more than probable that the prayer offered 
by the assembled apostles at the election of St. Matthias, 
was addressed to Jesus glorified®. A few months later the 
dying martyr St. Stephen passed to his crown. His last cry 
was a prayer to our Lord, moulded upon two of the seven 
sayings which our Lord Himself had uttered on the Cross. 
Jesus had prayed the Father to forgive His executioners. Jesus 
had commended His Spirit into the Father’s Handsf. The 
words which are addressed by Jesus to the Father, are by 
St. Stephen addressed to Jesus. To Jesus Stephen turns in 
that moment of supreme agony ; to Jesus he prays for pardon 
on his murderers; to Jesus, as to the King of the world of 


illustrated by the dying prayer of St. Stephen, whom his. murderers stoned 
ἐπικαλούμενον Kal λέγοντα, ‘ Κύριε “Inood, δέξαι τὸ πνεῦμά wov.’ (Acts vii. 59.) 
It cannot be doubted that in Acts xxii. 16, 2 Tim. ii. 22, the Κύριος Who 
is addressed is our Lord Jesus Christ. ᾿Ἐπικαλεῖσθαι is not followed by 
an accusative except in the sense of appealing to God or man. Its meaning 
is clear when it is used of prayer to the Eternal Father, 1 St. Pet. i. 17; 
Acts ii. 21 (but cf. Rom. x. 13); or of appeal to Him, 2 Cor. i. 23; or of 
appeal to a human judge, Acts xxv. 11, 12, 21, 25; xxvi. 32; xxviii. I9. 
Its passive use occurs in texts of a different construction: Acts iv. 36; 
x. 18; xii. 12; xv. 17; Heb. xi. 16; St. James ii. 7. 

© Acts i. 24: καὶ προσευξάμενοι εἶπον, "Σὺ Κύριε καρδιογνῶστα πάντων, 
ἀνάδειξον ἐκ τούτων τῶν δύο ἕνα ὃν ἐξελέξω᾽ κιτιλ. The selection of the twelve 
apostles is always ascribed to Jesus Christ. Acts i. 2: ods ἐξελέξατο. 
St. Luke vi. 13: προσεφώνησε τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ" Kal ἐκλεξάμενος ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν 
δώδεκα, ods καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασε. St. John vi. 70: οὐκ ἐγὼ ὑμᾶς τοὺς 
δώδεκα ἐξελεξάμην ; Ibid. xiii. 18: ἐγὼ οἶδα obs ἐξελεξάμην. Ibid. xv. 16: 
οὐχ ὑμεῖς με ἐξελέξασθε, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ ἐξελεξάμην ὑμᾶς. Ibid. ver. 19: ἐγὼ 
ἐξελεξάμεν ὑμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου. Meyer quotes Acts xv. 7: 6 Θεὸς ἐξελέξατο 
διὰ τοῦ στόματός μου ἀκοῦσαι τὰ ἔθνη τὸν λόγον τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, in order to 
shew that the Eternal Father must have been addressed. But this assumes 
that Θεός can have no reference to our Lord. Moreover St. Peter is clearly 
referring, not to his original call to the apostolate, but to his being directed 
to evangelize the Gentiles. St. Paul was indeed accustomed to trace up his 
apostleship to the Eternal Father as the ultimate Source of all authority 
(Gal. i. 15; 2 Cor. i. 1; Eph. 1.1; 2 Tim. i. 1); but this is not inconsistent 
with the fact that Jesus Christ chose and sent each and all of the apostles. 
The epithet καρδιογνώστης, and still more the word Κύριος, are equally . 
applicable to the Father and to Jesus Christ. For the former, see St. John 
i. 50, ii, 25, vi. 64, xxi. 17. It was natural that the apostles should thus 
apply to Jesus Christ to fill up the vacant chair, unless they had believed 
Him to be out of the reach of prayer or incapable of helping them. See 
Alford and Olshausen in loc.; Baumgarten’s Apost. History in loc. 

f Acts vii. 59,60: ἐλιθοβόλουν τὸν Στέφανον, ἐπικαλούμενον καὶ λέγοντα, 
«Κύριε Ἰησοῦ, δέξαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου. Θεὶς δὲ τὰ γόνατα, ἔκραξε φωνῇ «μεγάλῃ, 
Ἕ Κύριε, μὴ στήσῃς αὐτοῖς τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ταύτην." 

[ LECT. 


. ᾧΦ 


The dying prayer of St. Stephen. 369 


spirits, he commends his parting soul. It is suggested that 
St. Stephen’s words were ‘only an ejaculation forced from him 
in the extremity of his anguish, and that as such they are 
‘highly unfitted to be made the premiss of a theological in- 
ference?’ But the question is, whether the earliest apostolical 
Church did or did not pray to Jesus Christ. And St. Stephen’s 
dying prayer is strictly to the point. An ‘ejaculation’ may 
‘shew more clearly than any set formal prayer the ordinary 
currents of devotional thought and feeling; an ejaculation is 
more instinctive, more spontaneous, and therefore a truer index 
of a man’s real mind, than a prayer which has been used for years. 
And how could the martyr’s cry to Jesus have been the product 
of a ‘thoughtless impulse ?’? Dying men do not cling to devotional 
fancies or to precarious opinions; the soul in its last agony 
instinctively falls back upon its deepest certainties. Nor can 
the unpremeditated ejaculation of a person dying in shame and 
torture be credited with that element of dramatic artifice which 
may in rare cases have coloured parting words and actions 
when, alas! on the brink of eternity, men have thought more 
of a ‘place in history’ than of the awful Presence into which 
they were hastening. Is it hinted that St. Stephen was a 
recent convert, not yet entirely instructed in the complete faith 
and mind of the apostles, and not unlikely to exaggerate par- 
ticular features of their teaching? But St. Stephen is expressly 
described as a man ‘full of faith and of the Holy Ghosts.’ 
As such he had recently been chosen to fill an important office 
in the Church ; and as a prominent missionary and apologist 
of the Gospel he might seem almost to have taken rank with the 
apostles themselves. Is it urged that St. Stephen’s prayer was 
offered under the exceptional circumstances of a vision of Christ 
vouchsafed in mercy to His dying servanth? But it does not 
enter into the definition of prayer or worship that it must 
of necessity be addressed to an invisible Person. And the vision 
of Jesus standing at the right hand of God may have differed 
in the degree of sensible clearness, but in its general nature it 
did not differ, from that sight upon which the eye of every dying 
Christian has rested from the beginning. St. Stephen would 
not have prayed to Jesus Christ then, if he had never prayed 
to Him before; the vision of Jesus would not have tempted 
him to innovate upon the devotional law of his life ; the sight of 

‘8 Acts vi. 5: ἄνδρα πλήρη πίστεως καὶ Πνεύματος φγίου. 

h So apparently Meyer in loc. : ‘ Das Stephanus Jesum anrief, war hichst 
natiirlich, da er eben Jesum fiir ihn bereit stehend gesehen hatte.’ 
VII | Bb 


370 .Ὀ γαγογ of Ananias to Fesus Christ. 


Jesus would have only carried him in thought upwards to the 
Father, if the Father alone had been the Object of the Church’s 
earliest adoration. St. Stephen would never have prayed to 
Jesus, if he had been taught that such prayer was hostile to 
the supreme prerogatives of God; and the apostles, as mono- 
theists, must have taught him thus, unless they had believed 
that Jesus is God, who with the Father is worshipped and 
glorified. 

Indeed St. Stephen’s prayer may be illustrated, so far as this 
point is concerned, by that of Ananias at Damascus. To Ananias 
Jesus appeared in a vision, and desired him to go to the newly- 
converted Saul of Tarsus ‘in the street that is called Straight.’ 
The reply of Ananias is an instance of that species of prayer in 
which the soul trustfully converses with God even to the verge 
of argument and remonstrance, while yet it is controlled by the 
deepest sense of God’s awful greatness: ‘Lord, I have heard by 
many of this man, how much evil he hath done to Thy saints at 
Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests 
to bind all that call on Thy Namei’ Our Lord overrules the 
objections of His servant. But what man has not at times 
prayed for exemption, when God has made it plain that He wills 
him to undertake some difficult duty, or to embrace some sharp 
and heavy cross? Who has not pleaded with God the claims 
of His interests and His honour against what appears to be 
His Will, so long as it has been possible to doubt whether 
His Will is really what it seems to be? Ananias’ ‘remonstrance’ 
is a prayer; it is a spiritual colloquy ; it 15. ἃ form of prayer 
which implies daily, hourly familiarity with its Object; it 
is the language of a soul habituated to constant communion 
with Jesus. It shews very remarkably how completely Jesus 
occupies the whole field of vision in the soul of His servant. 
The ‘saints’ whom Saul of Tarsus has persecuted at Jerusalem, 
are the ‘saints,’ it is not said of God, but of Jesus; the Name 
which is called upon by those whom Saul has authority to 
bind at Damascus, is the Name of Jesus. Ananias does not 
glance at One higher than Jesus, as if Jesus were lower than 
God; Jesus is to Ananias his God, the Recipient of his worship, 
and yet the Friend before Whom he can plead the secret 
thoughts of his heart with earnestness and freedom. 


i Acts ix. 13, 14: Κύριε, ἀκήκοα, ἀπὸ πολλῶν περὶ τοῦ ἄνδρὸς τούτου, ὅσα 
κακὰ ἐποίησε τοῖς ἁγίοις σου ἐν Ἱερουσαλήμ᾽ καὶ ὧδε ἔχει ἐξουσίαν παρὰ τῶν 
ἀρχιερέων, δῆσαι πάντας τοὺς ἐπικαλουμένους τὸ ὄνομά σου. [ 

LECT. 


St. Paul’s first prayers to Fesus. 371 


But he to whom, at the crisis of a far greater destiny, Ana- 
nias brought consolation and relief from Jesus, was himself 
conspicuous for his devotion to the adorable Person of our Lord. 
At the very moment of his conversion, Saul of Tarsus sur- 
rendered himself by a prayer to Christ, as to the lawful Lord 
of his being. ‘Lord,’ he cried, ‘what wilt Thou have me to 
dok?’ And when afterwards in the temple our Lord bade 
St. Paul, ‘Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem,’ we 
find the Apostle, like Ananias, unfolding to Jesus his secret 
thoughts, his fears, his regrets, his confessions; laying them 
out before Him, and waiting for an answer from Jesus in the 
secret chambers of his soul, Indeed St. Paul constantly uses 
language which shews that he habitually thought of Jesus as of 
Divine Providence in a Human Form, watching over, befriending, 
consoling, guiding, providing for him and his, with Infinite fore- 
sight and power, but also with the tenderness of a human sym- 
pathy. In this sense Jesus is placed on a level with the Father 
in St. Paul’s two earliest Epistles. ‘Now God Himself and our 
Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you™ ;’ 
‘Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, 
Which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation 
and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you 
in every good word and work ®.’ Thus Jesus is associated with 
the Father, in one instance as directing the outward movements 
of the Apostle’s life, in another as building up the inward life 
of the recent converts to Christianity. In other devotional ex- 
pressions the Name of Jesus stands alone. ‘I trust in the Lord 
Jesus, so the Apostle writes to the Philippians, ‘to send Timo- 
theus shortly unto you®.’ ‘I thank Christ Jesus our Lord,’ so 
he assures St. Timothy, ‘Who hath given me power, for that He 


k Acts ix. 6: τρέμων τε καὶ θαμβῶν εἶπε, “ Κύριε, τί we θέλεις ποιῆσαι ;” 

' Thid. xxii. 19, 20: Κύριε, αὐτοὶ ἐπίστανται, ὅτι ἐγὼ ἤμην φυλακίζων καὶ 
δέρων κατὰ τὰς συναγωγὰς τοὺς πιστεύοντας ἐπὶ σέξ καὶ ὅτε ἐξεχεῖτο τὸ αἷμα 
Στεφάνου τοῦ μάρτυρός σου, καὶ αὐτὸς ἤμην ἐφεστὼς καὶ συνευδοκῶν τῇ ἄναι- 
ρέσει αὐτοῦ, καὶ φυλάσσων τὰ ἱμάτια τῶν ἀναιρούντων αὐτόν. 

m1 Thess, iii. 11: Αὐτὸς δὲ 6 Θεὸς καὶ Πατὴρ ἡμῶν, καὶ ὃ Κύριος ἡμῶν 
Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς, κατευθύναι τὴν ὁδὸν ἡμῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς. 

n 2 Thess. ii. 16,17: αὐτὸς δὲ 6 Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς, καὶ ὃ Θεὸς 
καὶ Πατὴρ ἡμῶν, ὃ ἀγαπήσας ἡμᾶς καὶ δοὺς παράκλησιν αἰωνίαν καὶ ἐλπίδα 
ἀγαθὴν ἐν χάριτι, παρακαλέσαι ὑμῶν τὰς καρδίας, καὶ στηρίξαι ὑμᾶς ἐν παντὶ 
λόγῳ καὶ ἔργω ἀγαθῷ. 

© Phil. ii. 19: ἐλπίζω δὲ ἐν Κυρίῳ ᾿Ἰησοῦ, Τιμόθεον ταχέως πέμψαι. ‘This 
hope was ἐν Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ : it rested and centred in Him; it arose from no 
extraneous feelings or expectations, and so would doubtless be fulfilled.’ 
Bp. Ellicott in loc. 

vil | Bb2 


é 


372 Prayer to Fesus Christ, how recognised 


counted me faithful, putting me into the ministryP.’ Is not 
this the natural language of a soul which is constantly engaged 
in communion with Jesus, whether it be the communion of 
praise or the communion of prayer? Jesus is to St. Paul, not 
a deceased teacher or philanthropist, who has simply done his 
great work and then has left it as a legacy to the world; He is 


God, ever living and ever present, the Giver of temporal and of | 


spiritual blessings, the Guide and Friend of man both in man’s 
outward and in his inward life. If we had no explicit records of 
prayers offered by St. Paul to Jesus, we might be sure that such 
prayers were offered, since otherwise the language which he 
employs could not have been used. But, in point of fact, the 
Apostle has not left us in doubt as to his faith or his practice 
in this respect. ‘If’ he asserts, ‘thou shalt confess with 
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart 
that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness ; and with 
the mouth confession is made to salvation. For the Scripture 
saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. For 
there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the 
Same is Lord over all, rich unto all that call upon Him. For 
whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be 
saved 4.’ The prophet Joel had used these last words of prayer 
to the Lord Jehovah. St. Paul, as the whole context shews 
beyond reasonable doubt, understands them of prayer to Jesus". 
And what are the Apostle’s benedictions in the Name of Christ 
but indirect prayers offered to Christ that His blessing might be 
vouchsafed to the Churches which the Apostle is addressing ? 
‘Grace be to you from God our Father, and from the Lord 

P i Tim. i. 12: καὶ χάριν ἔχω τῷ ἐνδυναμώσαντί με Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ τῷ 
. Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν, ὅτι πιστόν με ἡγήσατο, θέμενοϑ εἰς διακονίαν. 

a Rom. x. 9-13: ἐὰν ὁμολογήσῃς ἐν τῷ στόματί σου Κύριον ᾿Ἰησοῦν, καὶ 
πιστεύσῃς ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ σου ὅτι ὃ Θεὸς αὐτὸν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν, σωθήσῃ" καρδίᾳ 
γὰρ πιστεύεται εἰς δικαιοσύνην, στόματι δὲ ὁμολογεῖται εἰς σωτηρίαν. Λέγει 
γὰρ ἣ γραφὴ, " Πᾶς ὃ πιστεύων ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ οὐ καταισχυνθήσεται.᾽ Οὐ γάρ ἐστι 
διαστολὴ ᾿Ιουδαίου τε καὶ “EAAnvos* 6 γὰρ αὐτὸς Κύριος πάντων, πλουτῶν εἰς 
πάντας τοὺς ἐπικαλουμένους αὐτόν. “Πᾶς γὰρ ὃς ἂν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα 
Κυρίου, σωθήσεται. Cf. Isa. xxviii. 16; Joel ii. 32. Here St. Paul applies 


to Jesus the language which prophets had used of the Lord Jehovah. 
Cf. Acts ii. 21. 

τ Cf. Meyer in Rom. x12: 6 γὰρ αὐτὸς Κύριος πάντων. ‘Dieser Κύριος 
ist Christus, der αὐτός ver. 11 und der mit diesem αὐτός nothwendig iden- 
tische Κύριος ver. 13. Wire Gott (i.e. the Father) gemeint, so miisste man 

de den christlichen Charakter der Beweisfiihrung erst hinzutragen (wie 
Olsh.: ‘Gott in Christo’), was aber willkiirlich wire.’ For Κύριος πάντων, 
see Phil. ii. 11. Cf. St. Chrys. in loc. ! 


[ LECT. 


ae 


an St. Paul’s Epistles. 373 


Jesus Christ’. ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be 
with you allt.” Or what shall we say of St. Paul’s entreaties 
that he might be freed from the mysterious and humiliating 
infirmity which he terms his ‘thorn in the flesh?’ He tells 
us that three times he besought the Lord Jesus Christ that 
it might depart from him, and that in mercy his prayer was 
refused ¥. Are we to imagine that that prayer to Jesus was 
an isolated act in St. Paul’s spiritual life? Does any such 
religious act stand alone in the spiritual history of an ear- 
nest and moderately consistent man? Apostles believed that 
when the First-begotten was brought into the inhabited world, 
the angels of heaven were bidden to worship Him*®, They 


8 x Cor. i. 3. 

t Rom. xvi. 24; and almost in the same words, ver. 20. 

u 2 Cor. xii. 8,9: ὑπὲρ τούτου τρὶς τὸν Κύριον παρεκάλεσα, ἵνα ἀποστῇ am 
ἐμοῦ" καὶ εἴρηκέ μοι, “᾿Αρκεῖ σοι ἣ χάρις mov’ ἣ γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ 
τελειοῦται. ἥδιστα οὖν μᾶλλον καυχήσομαι ἐν ταῖς ἀσθενείαις μου, ἵνα ἐπι- 
σκηνώσῃ ἐπ᾽ ἐμὲ ἡ δύναμις τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Meyer in loc.: “ τὸν Κύριον, nicht 
Gott (the Father), sondern Christum (8. v. 9, ἣ δύναμις τοῦ Χριστοῦ), der 
ja der machtige Bezwinger des Satan’s ist..... Wie Paulus die Antwort, 
den χρηματισμός (Matt. ii. 12; Luk. ii. 6; Act. x. 22) von Christo emp- 
fangen habe, ist uns vollig unbekannt.’ 

x Heb. i. 6: ὅταν δὲ πάλιν εἰσαγάγῃ τὸν πρωτότοκον eis Thy οἰκουμένην, 
λέγει, ‘Kal προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι Θεοῦ. On this passage 
see the exhaustive note of Delitzsch, Comm. zum. Br. an die -Hebraer, pp. 
24-29. ‘Die LXX. iibers. hier ganz richtig προσκυνήσατε, denn WA ist 
ja kein praet. consec., und Augustin macht die den rechten Sinn treffende 
schéne Bemerkung: “adorate Eum ;” cessat igitur adoratio angelorum, qui 
non adorantur, sed adorant; mali angeli volunt adorari, boni adorant nec se 
adorari permittunt, ut vel saltem eorum exemplo idolatriz cessent.’ Es fragt 
sich nun aber: mit welchem Rechte oder auch nur auf welchem Grunde 
bezieht der Verf. eine Stelle, die von Jehova handelt, auf Christum?’ After 
discussing some unsatisfactory replies, he proceeds: ‘Der Grundsatz, von 
welchem der Verf. ausgeht, ist .... dieser: Ueberall wo im A. T. von einer 
endzeitigen letztentscheidenden Zukunft (Parusie), Erscheinung und Erweis- 
ung Jehova’s in seiner zugleich richterlichen und heilwirtigen Macht und 
Herrlichkeit die Rede ist, von einer gegenbildlich zur mosaischen Zeit sich 
verhaltenden Offenbarung Jehova’s, von einer Selbstdarstellung Jehova’s als 
Konigs seines Reiches: da ist Jehova=Jesus Christus; denn dieser ist 
Jehova, geoffenbaret im Fleisch; Jehova, eingetreten in die Menscheit und 
ihre Geschichte; Jehova, aufgegangen als Sonne des Heils iiber seinem 
Volke. Dieser Grundsatz ist auch unumstisslich wahr; auf ihm ruht der 
heilsgeschichtliche Zusammenhang, die tiefinnerste Einheit beider Testa- 
mente. Alle neutest. Schriftsteller sind dieses Bewusstseins voll, welches 
sich gleich auf der Schwelle der evangelischen Geschichte ausspricht ; denn 
dem ‘7 oy soll Elia vorausgehn Mal. iii. 23 f. und πρὸ προσώπου Κυρίου 
Johannes Le. i. 76, vgl. 17. Darum sind auch alle Psalmen in welchen die 
Verwirklichung des weltiiberwindenden Kénigthums Jehova’s besungen wird, 
messianisch und werden von unserem Verf. als solche betrachtet, denn die 


Vil} 


374 St. Fohn on prayer to the Son of Gop. 


declared Him Y, when His day of humiliation and suffering had 
ended, to have been so highly exalted that the Name which He 
had borne on earth, and which is the symbol of His Humanity, 
was now the very atmosphere and nutriment of all the upward 
torrents of prayer which rise from the moral world beneath His 
throne ; that as the God-Man He was worshipped by angels, by 
men, and by the spirits of the dead. The practice of the Apostles 
did but illustrate their faith ; and the prayers offered to Jesus 
by His servants on earth were believed to be but a reflection of 
that worship which is offered to Him by the Church of heaven. 
If this belief is less clearly traceable in the brief Epistles of 
St. Peter 4, it is especially observable in St. John. St. John is 
speaking of the Son of God, when he exclaims, ‘This is the con- 
fidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according 
to His Will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, 
....We know that we have the petitions that we desired of 
Him*,’ These petitions of the earthly Church correspond to the 
adoration above, where the wounded Humanity of our Lord is 
throned in the highest heavens. ‘I beheld, and lo, in the midst 
of the throne.... stood a Lamb as It had been slain.’ Around 


schliessliche Glorie der Theokratie ist nach heilsgeschichtlichem Plane keine 
andere als die der Christokratie, das Reich Jehova’s und das Reich Christi 
ist Eines.’ 

Υ Phil. ii. 9, 10: 6 Θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσε, καὶ ἐχαρίσατο αὐτῷ ὄνομα τὸ 
ὑπὲρ πᾶν ὄνομα" ἵνα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ ἐπουρανίων καὶ 
ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων" καὶ πᾶσα γλῶσσα ἐξομολογήσηται ὅτι Κύριος ᾿Τησοῦς 
Χριστὸς εἰς δόξαν Θεοῦ Πατρός. See Alford in loc.: ‘The general aim of 
the passage is....the exaltation of Jesus. The eis δόξαν Θεοῦ Πατρός 
below is no deduction from this, but rather an additional reason why we 
should carry on the exaltation of Jesus wntil this new particular ἐδ in- 
troduced. This would lead us to infer that the universal prayer is to be 
to Jesus. And this view is confirmed by the next clause, where every tongue 
is to confess that Jesus Christ is Κύριος, when we remember the common 
expression, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸ ὄνομα Κυρίου, for prayer. Rom. x. 12; 1 Cor. 
i. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 22.’ 

z Yet 1 St. Pet. iv. 11 is a doxology ‘ framed, as it might seem, for com- 
mon use on earth and in heaven.’ See also 2 St. Pet. iii. 18. 

a 1 St. John v. 13-15: ἵνα πιστεύητε eis τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Tiod τοῦ Θεοῦ. Kat 
αὕτη ἐστὶν ἣ παῤῥησία ἣν ἔχομεν πρὸς αὐτὸν, ὅτι ἐάν τι αἰτώμεθα κατὰ τὸ 
θέλημα αὐτοῦ, ἀκούει ἡμῶν" καὶ ἐὰν οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἀκούει ἡμῶν, ὃ ἂν αἰτώμεθα, 
οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἔχομεν τὰ αἰτήματα ἃ ἠτήκαμεν παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ. The natural con- 
struction of this passage seems to oblige us to refer αὐτοῦ and τὸ θέλημα to 
the Son of God (ver. 13). The passage 1 St. John iii. 21, 22 does not forbid 
this; it only shews how fully, in St. John’s mind, the honour and prerogatives 
of the Son are those of the Father. 

b Rev. v. 6: καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ τῶν τεσσάρων ζώων 
καὶ ἐν μέσῳ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, ἀρνίον ἑστηκὸς ὧς ἐσφαγμένον. Ι 

LECT. 


The Adoration of the Lamb. 375 


Him are three concentric circles of adoration. The inmost pro- 
ceeds from the four mysterious creatures and the four and twenty 
elders who ‘have harps, and golden vials full of odours, which 
are the prayers of the saints¢.’ These are the courtiers who are 
placed on the very steps of the throne; they represent more 
distant worshippers. But they too fall down before the throne, 
and sing the new song which is addressed to the Lamb slain and 
glorifiedd: ‘Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by 
Thy Blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and 
nation ; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and 
we shall reign on the earthe.’ Around these, at a greater 
distance from the Most Holy, there is a countless company of 
worshippers: ‘I heard the voice of many angels round about the 
throne and the creatures and the elders: and the number of 
them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of 
thousands ; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb That 
was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, 
and honour, and glory, and blessing’ Beyond these again, the 
entranced Apostle discerns a third sphere in which a perpetual 
worship is maintained. Lying outside the two inner circles of 
conscious adoration offered by the heavenly intelligences, there 
is in St. John’s vision an assemblage of all created life, which, 
whether it wills or not, lives for Christ’s as for the Father’s 
glory: ‘And every creature which is in heaven, and on the 
earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all 
that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and 
glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, 
and unto the Lamb for ever and evers.’ This is the hymn of 
the whole visible creation, and to it a response comes from 
the inmost circle of adoring beings, ratifying and harmonizing 
this sublime movement of universal life: ‘And the four creatures 


¢ Rev. v. 8: ἔχοντες ἕκαστος κιθάρας, καὶ φιάλας χρυσᾶς γεμούσας θυ- 
μιαμάτων, αἵ εἶσιν ai προσευχαὶ τῶν ἁγίων. 

ἃ Tbid.: ἔπεσον ἐνώπιον τοῦ ἀρνίου ... - καὶ ἄδουσιν φδὴν καινήν. 

6 Ibid. ver. 9: ἐσφάγης, καὶ jydpacas τῷ Θεῷ ἡμᾶς ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου, ἐκ 
πάσης φυλῆς καὶ γλώσσης καὶ λαοῦ καὶ ἔθνους, καὶ ἐποίἧσας ἡμᾶς τῷ Θεῷ ἡμῶν 
βασιλεῖς καὶ ἱερεῖς" καὶ βασιλεύσομεν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆ. 

f Ibid. vers. 11, 12: καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἤκουσα φωνὴν ἀγγέλων πολλῶν κυκλόθεν 
τοῦ θρόνου καὶ τῶν ζώων καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων... ... καὶ χιλιάδες χιλιάδων, 
λέγοντες φωνῇ μεγάλῃ, “"Αξιόν ἐστι τὸ ἀρνίον τὸ ἐσφαγμένον λαβεῖν τὴν 
δύναμιν καὶ πλοῦτον καὶ σοφίαν καὶ ἰσχὺν καὶ τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν καὶ εὐλογίαν. 

& Ibid. ver. 13: καὶ πᾶν κτίσμα ὅ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐν τῇ γῇ, καὶ 
ὑποκάτω τῆς γῆς, καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ἅ ἐστι, καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς πάντα, ἤκουσα 
λέγοντας, ‘TS καθημένῳ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ τῷ ἀρνίῳ ἡ εὐλογία καὶ ἣ τιμὴ καὶ 
ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. 

‘VIL | 


376 Characteristics of the worship of Fesus in N.T. 


said, Amen,’ And how does the redeemed Church on earth 
bear her part in this universal chorus of praise? ‘Unto Him 


That loved us, and washed us from our sins in His Own Blood, 


and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father ; 
to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Ameni,’ You 
will not, my brethren, mistake the force and meaning of this 
representation of the adoration of the Lamb in the Apocalypse. 
This representation cannot be compared with the Apocalyptic 
pictures of the future fortunes of the Church, where the imagery 
employed frequently leaves room for allusions so diverse, that no 
interpretation can be positively assigned to a particular symbol 
without a certain intellectual and spiritual immodesty in the 
interpreter who essays to do so. You may in vain endeavour 
satisfactorily to solve the questions which encompass such points 
as the number of the beast or the era of the millennium ; but 
you cannot doubt for one moment Who is meant by ‘the Lamb,’ 
or what is the character of the worship that is so solemnly 
offered to Him. 

But upon this worship of Jesus Christ as we meet with it in 
the apostolical age, let us here make three observations, 

a. First, then, it cannot be accounted for,.and so set aside, as 
being part of an undiscriminating cultus of heavenly or super- 
human beings in general. Such a cultus finds no place in the 
New Testament, except when it, or something very much re- 
sembling it, is expressly discountenanced. By the mouth of our 
Lord Jesus Christ the New Testament reaffirms the Sinaitic law 
which restricts worship to the Lord God Himself *. St. Peter 
will not sanction the self-prostrations of the grateful Cornelius, 
lest Cornelius should think of him as more than human}. 
When, at Lystra, the excited populace, with their priest, desired 
to offer sacrifice to St. Paul and St. Barnabas, as to ‘ deities 
who had come down to them in the likeness of men,’ the 
Apostles in their unfeigned distress protested that they were but 
men of like feelings with those whom they were addressing, and 
claimed for the living God that service which was His exclusive 


h Rev. v. 14: καὶ τὰ τέσσαρα ζῶα ἔλεγον, ᾿Αμήν. 

i Ibid. 1. 5,6: τῷ ἀγαπήσαντι ἡμᾶς καὶ λούσαντι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν 
ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὑτοῦ" καὶ ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς βασιλεῖς καὶ ἱερεῖς τῷ Θεῷ καὶ 
Πατρὶ αὑτοῦ: αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. ἄμήν. 

k St. Matt. iv. το; Deut. vi. 13; x. 20. 

1Acts x. 25: συναντήσας αὐτῷ ὃ Κορνήλιος, πεσὼν ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας προσε- 
κύνησεν. 6 δὲ Πέτρος αὐτὸν ἤγειρε λέγων, “᾿Ανάστηθι" κἀγὼ αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπός 
εἰμι.ἢ 

[LECT. 


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(1). o instances of secondary worship en the N.T. 377 


right™. When St. John fell at the feet of the angel of the 
Apocalypse, in profound acknowledgment of the marvellous 
privileges of sight and sound to which he had been admitted, he 
was peremptorily checked on the ground that the angel too was 
only his fellow-slave, and that God was the one true Object of 
worship®. One of the most salient features of the Gnostico- 
Jewish theosophy which threatened the faith of the Church of 
Colossee was the worshipping of angels ; and St. Paul censures 
it because it tended to loosen men’s hold upon the incommu- 
nicable prerogatives of the great Head of the Church®. Cer- 
tainly the New Testament does teach that we Christians have 
close communion with the blessed angels and with the sainted 
dead, such as would be natural to members of one great and 
really undivided family. The invisible world is not merely 
above, it is around us; we have come into it; and Christ’s 
_ kingdom on earth and in heaven? forms one supernatural whole. 
But the worship claimed for, accepted by, and paid to Jesus, 
stands out in the New Testament in the sharpest relief. This 
relief is not softened. or shaded off by any instances of an in- 
ferior homage paid, whether legitimately or not, to created beings. 
We do not meet with any clear distinction between a primary 
and a secondary worship, by which the force of the argument 
might have been more or less seriously weakened. Worship is 


τὰ Acts xiv.14,15: διαῤῥήξαντες τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν εἰσεπήδησαν eis τὸν ὄχλον, 
κράζοντες καὶ λέγοντες, “Ανδρες, τι ταῦτα ποιεῖτε; καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁμοιοπαθεῖς 
ἐσμεν ὑμῖν ἄνθρωποι, εὐαγγελιζόμενοι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τούτων τῶν ματαίων ἐπιστρέφειν 
ἐπὶ τὸν Θεὸν τὸν ζῶντα. 

n Rev. xxii. 8: καὶ ἐγὼ Ιωάννης ὃ βλέπων ταῦτα καὶ ἀκούων᾽ καὶ ὅτε ἤκουσα 
καὶ ἔβλεψα, ἔπεσα προσκυνῆσαι ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ποδῶν τοῦ ἀγγέλου τοῦ δεικ- 
νύοντός μοι ταῦτα. καὶ λέγει μοι, "Ὅρα μή" σύνδουλός σου γάρ εἶμι καὶ τῶν 
ἀδελφῶν σου τῶν προφητῶν, καὶ τῶν τηρούντων τοὺς λόγους τοῦ βιβλίου τού- 
του" τῷ Θεῷ προσκύνησον.᾽ 

© Col. ii. 18: μηδεὶς ὑμᾶς καταβραβευέτω θέλων ἐν ταπεινοφροσύνῃ καὶ 
θρησκείᾳ τῶν ἀγγέλων. The Apostle condemns this (1) on the moral ground 
that the Gnostic teacher here alluded to claimed to be in possession of truths 
respecting the unseen world of which he really was ignorant, ἃ μὴ ἐώρακεν 
ἐμβατεύων, εἰκῇ φυσιούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ vods τῆς σαρκὸς αὑτοῦ: (2) On the 
dogmatic ground of a resulting interference with due recognition of the 
Headship of Jesus Christ, the One Source of the supernatural life of the 
Church, καὶ οὐ κρατῶν τὴν κεφαλὴν, ἐξ οὗ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῶν ἁφῶν καὶ 
συνδέσμων ἐπιχορηγούμενον καὶ συμβιβαζόμενον, αὔξει τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ 
Θεοῦ. 

P Heb. xii. 22: προσεληλύθατε Σιὼν ὄρει, καὶ πόλει Θεοῦ ζῶντος, Ἵερου- 


σαλὴμ ἐπουρανίῳ, καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων, πανηγύρει καὶ ἐκκλησίᾳ πρωτοτόκων .--““ 


ἐν οὐρανοῖς ἀπογεγραμμένων, καὶ κριτῇ Θεῷ πάντων, καὶ πνεύμασι δικαΐων 
τετελειωμένων; καὶ διαθήκης νέας μεσίτῃ ᾿Ιησοῦ. pes 
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378 (2) Fesus worshipped with adoration due to God. 


claimed for, and is given to, God alone; and if Jesus is wor- 
shipped, this is simply because Jesus is God4. 

8. The worship paid to Jesus in the apostolic age was cer- 
tainly in many cases that adoration which is due to the Most 
High God, and to Him alone, from all His intelligent creatures. 
God Himself must needs have been, then as ever, the One 
Object of real worship. But the Eternal Son, when He became 
Man, ceased not to be God. As God, He received from those 
who believed in Him the only worship which their faith could 
render’. This is clear from the representations of heavenly wor- 
ship in the Apocalypse, which we have been considering, even 
if we take no other passages into account. The Apocalyptic 
worship of our glorified Lord is not any mere honorary acknow- 
ledgment that His redemptive work is complete. Even at the 
moment’ of His Incarnation worship is addressed to Christ’s 
Divine and Eternal Person. Doubtless the language of devotion 
to Him which we find in the Gospels represents many postures 
of the human soul, ranging between that utter self-prostration 
which we owe to the Most High, and that trustful familiarity 
with which we pour our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears 
into the ear of a human friend. Such ‘ lower forms’ of worship 
lead up to, and are explained by, the higher. They illustrate 
the condescension and purpose of the Incarnation. But the 


4 The ‘worship’ of Buddha has sometimes been compared to that of 
our Divine Lord, as if Buddha were regarded as a real divinity by his fol- 
lowers. But ‘le Bouddha reste homme, et ne cherche jamais & dépasser les 
limites de ’humanité, au dela de laquelle il ne congoit rien. L’enthousiasme 
de ses disciples a été aussi réservé que lui-méme: dans le culte innocent 
quwils lui rendaient, leur ferveur s’adressait ἃ un souvenir consolateur et 
fortifiant ; jamais leur superstition intéressée ne s’adressatt ad sa puis- 
sance . ... Ni l’orgueil de Cakyamouni, ni le fanatisme des croyants, n’a 
congu un sacrilége; le Bouddha, tout grand qu’il se croit, n’a point risqué 
Vapothéose; . .. . jamais personne n’a songé & en faire un dieu.’ Saint- 
Hilaire, Le Bouddha, p. 168. ; 

τ Meyer’s remarks are very far from satisfactory. ‘Das Anrufen Christi 
ist nicht das Anbeten schlechthin, wie es nur in Betreff des Vaters, als des 
einigen absoluten Gottes (!) geschieht, wohl aber die Anbetung nach der durch 
das Verhaltniss Christi zum Vater (dessen wesensgleicher Sohn, Ebenbild, 
Throngenosse, Vermittler, und Fiirsprecher fiir die Menschen u. s. w. er ist) 
bedingten Relativitit im betenden Bewusstsein . ... Der Christum Anru- 
fende ist sich bewusst, er rufe ihn nicht als den schlechthinigen Gott, sondern 
als den gottmenschlichen Vertreter und Mittler Gottes an.’ In Rom. x. 
12 our Lord is represented as being equal with the Father, and as therefore 
equally entitled to adoration. Adoration is strictly due to the Uncreated 
Substance of God, and to Jesus Christ as being personally of It. The me- 
diatorial functions of His Manhood cannot affect the bearings of this truth. 

® Cat. Rac. p. 164. 

[ LECT. 


Ἁ 


(3) Adoration of the Sacred Manhood of Fesus. 379 


familiar confidence which the Incarnation invites cannot be 
pleaded against the rights of the Incarnate God. A free, trust- 
ful, open-hearted converse with Christ is compatible with the 
lowliest worship of His Person; Christian confidence even ‘leans 
upon His breast at supper,’ while Christian faith discerns His 
Glory, and ‘falls at His feet as dead.’ 

y. The apostolic worship of Jesus Christ embraced His 
Manhood no less than it embraced His Godheadt. According to 
St. Paul His Human Name of Jesus, that is, His Human Nature, 
is worshipped on earth, in heaven, and among the dead. It 
is not the Unincarnate Logos, but the wounded Humanity of 
Jesus, Which is enthroned and adored in the vision of ὑπ 
Apocalypse. To adore Christ’s Deity while carefully refusing 
to adore His Manhood would be to forget that His Manhood 
is for ever joined to His Divine and Eternal Person, Which is 
the real Object of our adoration. Since He has taken the 
Manhood into God, It is an inseparable attribute of His Per- 
sonal Godhead; every knee must bend before It; henceforth the 
angels themselves around the throne must adore, not as of yore 
the Unincarnate Son, but ‘the Lamb as It had been slain.’ 

3. Thus rooted in the doctrine and practice of the apostles, 
the worship of Jesus Christ was handed down to succeeding ages 
as an integral and recognised element of the spiritual life of the 
Church. The early Fathers refer to the worship of our Lord as 
to a matter beyond dispute. Even before the end of the first 
century St. Ignatius bids the Roman Christians ‘put up sup- 
plications to Christ’ on his behalf, that he might attain the 
distinction of martyrdom". St. Polycarp’s Epistle to the 


t Cf. Pearson, Minor Theological Works, vol. i. 307: ‘Christus sive 
Homo Ile Qui est Mediator, adoratus est. Heb. i. 6; Apoc. v. 11, 12. 
Hec est plenissima descriptio adorationis. Et hic Agnus occisus erat Homo 
ille, Qui est Mediator ; Ergo Homo 1116, Qui est Mediator est adorandus. 
St. Greg. Nazianzen. Orat. 11. : Εὔτις μὴ προσκυνεῖ τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον, ἀνάθεμα 
ἔστω, καὶ τετάχθω μετὰ τῶν θεοκτόνων.᾽ Cf. also Ibid. p. 308: “ Christus, 
qua est Mediator, est unicaé adoratione colendus. Concil. Gen. V. Collat. 
viii. can. 9. Si quis adorari in duabus naturis dicit Christum, ex quo duas 
adorationes introducat, semotim Deo Verbo, et semotim Homini: aut si 
πα eo 8 are adorat Christum, sed non wné adoratione Deum Verbum Incar- 
natum cum Hjus Carne adorat, extra quod sanctz Dei ecclesiz ab initio 
traditum est ; talis anathema sit.” See the whole of this and the preceding 
‘ Determination.” And compare St. Cyril’s 8th Anathema; Damasce., iv. 3; 
Hooker, E. P. v. 54, 9. 

u St. Ign. ad Rom. 4: λιτανεύσατε τὸν Χριστὸν [τὸν Κύριον ed. Dressel, 
which, however, must here mean our Lord] ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ, ἵνα διὰ τῶν ὀργάνων 
τούτων [Θεῷ ed. Dressel] θυσία εὑρεθῶ. Cf. ad Magn. 7. 


vil] 


380 The worship of Fesus in the subapostolic Fathers; 


Philippians opens with a benediction which is in fact a prayer 
to Jesus Christ, as being, together with the Almighty Father, the 
Giver of peace and mercy*. Polycarp prays that ‘the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the’ Eternal Priest 
Himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would build up his 
readers in faith and truth and in all meekness, . . . and would 
give them a part and lot among the saintsy.’ And at a later 
day, standing bound at the pyre of martyrdom, he cries, ‘ For all 
things, O God, do I praise and bless and glorify Thee, together 
with the Eternal and Heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy well-beloved 
Son, with Whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost, be glory, both 
now and for ever. Amen%’ After his death, Nicetas begged 
the proconsul not to deliver up his body for burial, ‘lest the 
Christians should desert the Crucified One, and should begin to 


worship this new martyr®.’ The Jews, it appears, employed an - 


argument which may have been the language of sarcasm or of 
a real anxiety. ‘They know not, continues the encyclical 
letter of the Church of Smyrna, ‘that neither shall we ever be 
able to desert Christ Who suffered for the salvation of all who 
are saved in the whole world, nor yet to worship any other. 
For Him indeed, as being the Son. of God, we do adore; but 
the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we worthily 
love by reason of their unsurpassed devotion to Him their own 
King and Teacher. God grant that we too may be fellow- 
partakers and fellow-disciples with them».’ The writers of this 
remarkable passage were not wanting in love and honour to the 
martyr of Christ. ‘Afterward,’ say they, ‘we, having taken 
up his bones, which were more precious than costly stones, and 
of more account than gold, placed them where it was fitting®’ 


x St. Polyc. ad Phil. 1: ἔλέος ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη παρὰ Θεοῦ παντοκράτορος 
καὶ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν πληθυνθείη. 

y Ibid. 12: ‘ Deus autem et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et ipse 
Sempiternus Pontifex, Dei Filius Jesus Christus, zdificet vos in fide et veri- 
tate et in omni mansuetudine,.... « et det vobis sortem et partem inter 
sanctos suos.’ | 

z Mart. St. Polyc. 6. 14. 

a Ibid. c. 17: μὴ, φησὶν, ἀφέντες τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον, τοῦτον ἄρξωνται 
σέβεσθαι. 

b Ibid. : ἀγνοοῦντες, ὅτι οὔτε τὸν Χριστόν ποτε καταλιπεῖν δυνησόμεθα τὸν 
ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς κόσμου τῶν σωζομένων σωτηρίας παθόντα, οὔτε ἕτερόν 
τινα σέβεσθαι. τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ Ὑἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ Θεοῦ προσκυνοῦμεν" τοὺς δὲ 
μάρτυρας, ὡς μαθητὰς καὶ μιμητὰς τοῦ Κυρίου, ἀγαπῶμεν ἀξίως, ἕνεκα εὐνοίας 
ἀνυπερβλήτου τῆς εἰς τὸν ἴδιον βασιλέα καὶ διδάσκαλον ὧν γένοιτο καὶ ἡμᾶς 
συγκοινωνούς τε καὶ συμμαθητὰς γενέσθαι. 

ς Mart. St. Polyc. c. 18, 

[ LECT. 


i a ee τον ὦ, . 


an SS. Fustin, Ireneus, and Clement Alex. 381 


But they draw the sharpest line between such a tribute of 
affection and the worship of the Redeemer; Jesus was wor- 
shipped as ‘being the Son of God.’ The Apologists point to 
the adoration of Jesus Christ, as well as to that of the Father, 
when replying to the heathen charge of atheism. St. Justin 
protests to the emperors that the Christians worship God 
aloned. Yet he also asserts that the Son and the Spirit share in 
the reverence and worship which is offered to the Father? ; and 
in controversy with Trypho he especially urges that prophecy 
foretold the adoration of Messiahf. St. Irenzeus insists that the 
miracles which were in his day of common occurrence in the 
Church were not to be ascribed to any invocation of angels, nor 
yet to magical incantations, nor to any form of evil curiosity. 
They were simply due to the fact that. Christians constantly 
prayed to God the Maker of all things, and called upon the 
Name of His Son Jesus Christ. Clement of Alexandria has 


ἃ Apol. i. § 17, p - 44, ed. Otto. After quoting St. Luke XxX. 22-25 he 
proceeds: ὅθεν Sy μὲν μόνον προσκυνοῦμεν, ὑμῖν δὲ πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα χαίροντες 
ὑπηρετοῦμεν. 

e Ibid. i. § 6, p. 14, ed. Otto. : Καὶ ὁμολογοῦμεν τῶν τοιούτων νομιζομένων 
θεῶν ἄθεοι εἶναι, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχὶ TOD ἀληθεστάτου Kal πατρὸς δικαιοσύνης Kal σωφρο- 
σύνης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῶν, ἀνεπιμίκτου τε κακίας θεοῦ" ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖνόν τε, καὶ 
τὸν παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ Ὑἱὸν ἐλθόντα καὶ διδάξαντα ἡμᾶς ταῦτα καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων, 
ἑπομένων καὶ ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαθῶν ἀγγέλων στρατὸν, Πνεῦμά τε τὸ προφητι- 
κὸν σεβόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν λόγῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ τιμῶντες. With regard to 
the clause of this passage which has been the subject of so much controversy 
(καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ... . ἀγγέλων στρατὸν), (1) it is impossible to make 
στρατὸν depend upon σεβόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν without involving St. Justin 
in self-contradiction (cf. the passage quoted above), and Bellarmine’s argu- 
ment based on this construction (de Beatitud. Sanctor. lib. i. c. 13) proves, 
if anything, too much for his purpose, viz. that the same worship was paid to 
the angels as to the Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Several moderns (quoted 
by Otto in loc.) who adopt this construction use it for a very different object. 
(2) It is difficult to accept Bingham’s rendering (Ant. bk. 13, c. 2, § 2) which 
joins ἀγγέλων στρατὸν and ὑμᾶς with διδάξαντα, and makes Christ the Teacher 
not of men only but of the angel host. This idea, however, seems to have 
no natural place in the passage, and we should have expected ταῦτα ἡμᾶς not 
ἡμᾶς ταῦτα. (3) It seems better, therefore, with Bull, Chevallier (Transl. 
p- 152), Mohler (Tiibing. Theol. Quartalsch. 1833, Fasc. i. p. 53 sqq-, quoted 
by Otto) to make ἀγγέλων στρατὸν and ταῦτα together dependent upon 
διδάξαντα : ‘the Son of God taught us not merely about these (viz. evil 
spirits, cf. § 5) but also concerning the good angels,’ &e. ; τὸν ἀγγέχων 
στρατὸν being elliptically put for τὰ περὶ τοῦ. .. ἀγγέλων στρατοῦ. 

f Dial. cum ‘Tryph. c. 68: γραφὰς, at διαῤῥήδην τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ μα αν 
καὶ προσκυνητὸν καὶ Θεὸν ἀποδεικνύουσιν. Ibid. c. 76: Καὶ Δαυὶδ. 

Θεὸν ἰσχυρὸν καὶ προσκυνητὸν, Χριστὸν ὄντα, ἐδήλωσε. 

ΒΝ ἢ 69a: ‘ecclesia: 63)... nomen Domini nostri Jesu Christi 
invocans, virtutes ad utilitates hominum, sed non ad seductionem, perficit.’ 
Observe too the argument which follows. 


vir | 


382 References to the worship of Fesus in Tertullian, 


left us three treatises, designed to form a missionary trilogy. 
Tn one he is occupied with converting the heathen from idola- 
try to the faith of Christ ; in a second he instructs the new 
convert in the earlier lessons and duties of the Christian faith ; 
while in his most considerable work he labours to impart the 
higher knowledge to which the Christian is entitled, and so to 
render him ‘the perfect Gnostic.’ In each of these treatises, 
widely different as they are in point of practical aim, Clement 
bears witness to the Church’s worship of our Lord. In the 


first, his Hortatory Address to the Greeks, he winds up a long 


argumentative invective ,against idolatry with a burst of fervid 
entreaty : ‘ Believe, O man,’ he exclaims, ‘in Him Who is both 
Man and God ; believe, O man, in the living God, Who suffered 
and Who is adored).’ The Peedagogus concludes with a prayer 
of singular beauty ending in a doxologyi, and in these the Son 
is worshipped and praised as the Equal of the Father. In the 
Stromata, as might be expected, prayer to Jesus Christ is rather 
taken for granted; the Christian life is to be a continuous 
worship of the Word, and through Him of the Father. Ter- 
tullian in his Apology grapples with the taunt that the Chris- 
tians worshipped a Man Who had been condemned by the 
Jewish tribunals! Tertullian does not deny or palliate the 
charge ; he justifies the Christian practice. Whatever Christ 
might be in the opinion of the pagan world, Christians knew 
Him to be of one substance with the Father™. The adoration 
of Christ,.then, was not a devotional eccentricity ; it was an 
absolute duty. In one passage Tertullian argues against mixed 
marriages with the heathen, because in these cases there could be 


h Protrept. c. x. p. 84, ed. Potter: πίστευσον, ἄνθρωπε, ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ Θεῷ" 
πίστευσον, ἄνθρωπε, τῷ παθόντι Kal προσκυνουμένῳ Θεῷ ζῶντι" πιστεύσατε οἱ 
δοῦλοι τῷ νεκρῷ" πάντες ἄνθρωποι, πιστεύσατε μόνῳ τῷ πάντων ἀνθρώπων Θεῷ" 
πιστεύσατε καὶ μισθὸν λάβετε σωτηρίαν κ-.τ.λ. 

i Pedagog. lib. iii. c. 7, p. 311, ed. Potter: ὅπερ οὖν λοιπὸν ἐπὶ τοιαύτῃ 
πανηγύρει τοῦ Λόγου, τῷ Λόγῳ προσευξώμεθα' Ἵλαθι τοῖς σοῖς, παιδαγωγὲ, 
παιδίοις, Πατὴρ, ἡνίοχε Ἰσραὴλ, Ὑἱὲ καὶ Πατὴρ, Ἕν ἄμφω Κύριε. δὸς δὲ ἡμῖν 
τοῖς σοῖς ἑπομένοις παραγγέλμασι τὸ ὁμοίωμα πληρῶσαι... ... αἰνοῦντας εὐ- 
χαριστεῖν, [εὐχαριστοῦνταΞ] αἰνεῖν, τῷ μόνῳ Πατρὶ καὶ Tio, Tig καὶ Πατρὶ, 
παιδαγωγῷ καὶ διδασκάλῳ Tid, σὺν καὶ τῷ ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι, πάντα τῷ ‘Evi, ἐν ᾧ 
τὰ πάντα, δι᾽ ὃν τὰ πάντα ἕν, .. ᾧ ἡ δόξα καὶ νῦν καὶ εἰς αἰῶναϑ. 

k See the fine passage, Stromat. lib. vii. c. 7, ad init. p. 851, ed. Potter. 

1 Apolog. c. 21: ‘Sed et vulgus jam scit Christum ut hominum aliquem, 
qualem Judzi judicaverunt, quo facilius quis nos hominis cultores existim- 
averit. Verum neque de Christo erubescimus, cum sub nomine ejus deputari 
et damnari juvat.’ 


m Apolog. 6. 21: ‘ Hunc ex Deo prolatum didicimus, et prolatione gene- 


ratum, et idcirco Filium Dei οὐ Dewm dictum, ex unitate iis 
LECT. 


ee μόν τ μδι νων. μ....6 


References to the worship of Fesus in Origen. 383 


no joint worship of the Redeemer; elsewhere he implies that the 
worship of Jesus was co-extensive with faith in Christianity 9, 
Origen’s erratic intellect may have at times betrayed him, on 
this as on other subjects, into languageP, more or less incon- 
sistent with his own general line of teaching, by which it must 
in fairness be interpreted. Origen often insists upon the worship 
of Jesus Christ as being a Christian duty4; he illustrates this 
duty, espetially in his Homilies, by his personal example? ; he 


n Ad Uxor. lib. ii. c.6: ‘Audiat ... de ganea. Quz Dei mentio? que 
Christi invocatio ? 

© Adv. Jud.c. 7: ‘Ubique creditur, ab omnibus gentibus supra enumer- 
atis colitur, ubique regnat, ubique adoratur.’ 

P Particularly in the treatise, De Oratione, c. 15, vol. i. ed. Ben. p. 223: 
πῶς δὲ οὐκ ἔστι κατὰ τὸν εἰπόντα" ‘Ti με λέγεις ἀγαθόν ; οὐδεὶς ἀγαθὸς εἰ μὴ 
εἷς 6 Θεὺς, 6 Πατήρ" εἰπεῖν ἄν: Τί ἐμοὶ προσεύχῃ : Μόνῳ τῷ Πατρὶ προσ- 
εύχεσθαι χρὴ, ῳ κἀγὼ προσεύχομαι" ὅπερ διὰ τῶν ἁγίων γραφῶν μανθάνετε" 
᾿Αρχιερεῖ γὰρ τῷ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατασταθέντι ὑπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς, καὶ παρακλήτῳ 
ὑπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς εἶναι λαβόντι, εὔχεσθαι ἡμᾶς οὐ δεῖ, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀρχιερέως καὶ 
παρακλήτου κιτ.λ. This indefensible language was a result of the line taken 
by Origen in opposing the Monarchians. ‘ As the latter, together with the 
distinction of substance in the Father and the Son, denied also that of the 
Person, so it was with Origen a matter of practical moment, on account of the 
systematic connexion of ideas in his philosophical system of Christianity, to 
maintain in opposition to them the personal independence of the Logos. 
Sometimes in this controversy he distinguishes between unity of substance 
and personal unity or unity of subject, so that it only concerned him to con- 
trovert the latter. And this certainly was the point of greatest practical 
moment to him; and he must have been well aware that many of the 
Fathers who contended for a personal distinction held firmly at the same time 
to a wnity of substance. But according to the internal connexion of his own 
system (Neander means his Platonic doctrine of the τὸ dv) both fell together; 
wherever he spoke, therefore, from the position of that system, he affirmed 
at one and the same time the ἑτερότης THs οὐσίας and the ἑτερότης τῆς ὗπο- 
στάσεως ΟΥ̓ τοῦ ὑποκειμένου. Neander, Ch. Hist. ii. 311, 312. From this 
philosophical premiss Origen deduces his practical inference above noticed : 
εἰ γὰρ ἕτερος, ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις δείκνυται; κατ᾽ οὐσίαν καὶ ὑποκείμενός ἐστιν ὃ Ὑἱὸς 
τοῦ Πατρὸς, ἤτοι προσκυνητέον τῷ Tig καὶ οὐ τῷ Πατρὶ, ἢ ἀμφοτέροις, ἢ τῷ Πατρὶ 
μόνῳ. De Orat. c. 15, sub init. p. 222. Although, then, Origen expresses 
his conclusion in Scriptural terminology, it is a conclusion which is traceable 
to his philosophy as distinct from his strict religious belief, and it is entirely 
contradicted by a large number of other passages in his writings. 

ᾳ Contr. Cels. v. 12, sub fin. vol. i. p. 587. Also Ibid. viii. 12, p. 750: 
ἕνα οὖν Θεὸν, ὡς ἀποδεδώκαμεν, τὸν Πατέρα καὶ τὸν Tidy θεραπεύομεν" καὶ 
μένει ἡμῖν ὁ πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ἀτενὴς λόγοΞ" καὶ οὐ τὸν ἔναγχός γε φανέντα, 
ὡς πρότερον οὖκ ὄντα, ὑπερθρησκεύομεν. Ibid. viii. 26: μόνῳ γὰρ προσευκτέον 
τῷ ἐπὶ πᾶσι Θεῷ, καὶ προσευκτέον γε τῷ Μονογενεῖ, καὶ Πρωτοτόκῳ πάσης 
κτίσεως, Δόγῳ Θεοῦ. 

τ See his prayer on the furniture of the tabernacle, as spiritually explained, 
Hom. 13 in Exod. xxxv. p. 176: ‘Domine Jesu, presta mihi, ut aliquid 
monumenti habere merear in tabernaculo Tuo. Ego optarem (si fieri 
vil | 


384 Lhe worship of Fesus tn Origen and Novatian. 


bases it upon the great truth which justifies and demands such 
a practical acknowledgment’. It is in keeping with this that 
Origen explains the frankincense offered by the wise men to 
our Infant Saviour as an acknowledgment of His Godhead ; since 
such an action obviously involved that adoration which is due 
only to God. This explanation could not have been put for- 
ward by any but a devout worshipper of Jesus. In the work on 
the Trinity", ascribed to Novatian, in the treatises and letters * 


posset), esse aliquid meum in illo auro, ex quo propitiatorium fabricatur, 
vel ex quo arca contegitur, vel ex quo candelabrum fit luminis et lucerne. 
Aut si aurum non habeo, argentum saltem aliquid inveniar offerre, quod 
proficiat in columnas, vel in bases earum. Aut certe vel ris aliquid..... 
Tantum ne in omnibus jejunus et infecundus inveniar.’ Cf. too Hom. i. 
in Lev., Hom. v. in Lev., quoted by Bingham, Ant. xiii. 2, § 3. 

* Comm. in Rom. x. lib. viii. vol. 4, p. 624, ed. Ben., quoted by Bingham, 
ubi supra: ‘{Apostolus] in principio Epistole quam ad Corinthios scribit, 
ubi dicit, “Cum omnibus qui invocant nomen Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in 
omni loco ipsorum et nostro” eum cujus nomen invocatur, Dominum Jesum 
Christum esse pronuntiat. Si ergo et Enos, et Moyses, et Aaron, et Samuel, 
‘*‘invocabant Dominum et ipse exaudiebat eos,” sine dubio Christum Jesum 
Dominum invocabant; et si invocare nomen Domini et orare Dominum 
unum atque idem est : sicut invocatur Deus, invocandus est. Christus; et 
sicut oratur Deus, ita et orandus est Christus; et sicut offerimus Deo Patri 
primo omnium orationes, ita et Domino Jesu Christo; et sicut offerimus 
postulationes Patri, ita offerimus postulationes et Filio ; et sicut offerimus 
gratiarum actiones Deo, ita et gratias offerimus Salvatorii Unum namque 
utrique honorem deferendum, id est Patri et Filio, divinus edocet sermo, cum 
dicit: “Ὁ omnes honorificent Filium, sicut honorificant Patrem.” Ἵ 

t Contr. Cels. i. 60, p. 375: φέροντες μὲν Sapa, ἃ (ἵν᾽ οὕτως ὀνομάσω) 
συνθέτῳ τινὶ ἐκ Θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπου θνητοῦ προσήνεγκαν, σύμβολα μὲν, ὡς 
βασιλεῖ τὸν χρυσὸν, ὡς δὲ τεθνηξομένῳ τὴν σμύρναν, ὡς δὲ “Θεῷ τὸν λιβανωτόν" 
προσήνεγκαν δὲ, μαθόντες τὸν τόπον τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ. ᾿Αλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ Θεὸς 
ἦν, ὁ ὑπὲρ τοὺς βοηθοῦντας ἀνθρώποις ἀγγέλους ἐνυπάρχων Σωτὴρ τοῦ γένους 
τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἄγγελος ἠμείψατο τὴν τῶν μάγων ἐπὶ προσκυνῆσαι τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν 
εὐσέβειαν, χρηματίσας αὐτοῖς “μὴ ἥκειν πρὸς τὸν Ἡρώδην, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπανελθεῖν 
ἄλλῃ ὁδῷ εἰς τὰ οἰκεῖα. Cf. St. Tren. adv. Her. iii. 9. 2. 

α Novat. de Trin. c. 14, quoted by Bingham: ‘Si homo εὐρύν ΤΣ 
Christus, quomodo adest ubique invocatus, quum hec hominis natura non ~ 
sit, sed Dei, ut adesse omni loco possit ?’ 

x St. Cyprian. de Bono Patientiz, p. 220, ed. Fell.: ‘Pater Deus precepit 
Filium suum adorari: et Apostolus Paulus, divini preecepti memor, ponit et 
dicit: ‘‘ Deus exaltavit illum et donavit illi nomen quod est super omne 
nomen ;.ut in nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur, coelestium, terrestrium, et 
infernorum :” et in Apocalypsi angelus Joanni volenti adorari se resistit et 
dicit: ‘‘Vide ne feceris, quia conservus tuus sum et fratrum tuorum; Jesum 
Dominum adora.” Qualis Dominus Jesus, et quanta patientia ejus, ut qui 
in ccelis adoratur, necdum vindicetur in terris?’ In Rev. xx. 9, St. Cyprian 
probably read τῷ Κυρίῳ instead of τῷ Θεῷ. See his language to Lucius, 
Bishop of Rome, who had recently been a confessor in a sudden persecution 
of Gallus, A.D. 252 (Ep. 61, p. 145, ed. vies ‘Has ad vos “oe mit- 

LECT. 


Value of [lymns as expressing Christiandoctrine. 385 


of St. Cyprian, in the apologetic works of ArnobiusY and Lac- 
tantius 4, references to the subject are numerous and decisive. 
But our limits forbid any serious attempt to deal with the 
materials which crowd upon us as we advance into the central 
and later decades of the third century ; and at this point it may 
be well to glance at the forms with which the primitive Church 
actually approached the throne of the Redeemer. 

It is clear that Christian hymnody has ever been prized and 
hated for its services in popularising the worship of Jesus 
Christ. Hymnody actively educates, while it partially satisfies, 
the instinct of worship ; it is a less formal and sustained act of 
worship than prayer, yet it may really involve transient acts 
of the deepest adoration. But, because it is less formal ; be- 
cause in using it the soul can pass, as it were, unobserved and 
at will from mere sympathetic states of feeling to adoration, and 
from adoration back to passive although reverent sympathy ;— 
hymnody has always been a popular instrument for the ex- 
pression of religious feeling. And from the first years of 
Christianity it seems to have been especially consecrated to the 
honour of the Redeemer. We have already noted traces of such 
apostolical hymns in the Pauline Epistles; but some early 
Humanitarian teachers did unintentional service, by bringing 
into prominence the value of hymns as witnesses to Christian 
doctrine, and as efficient means of popular dogmatic teaching. 
When the followers of Artemon maintained that the doctrine 
of Christ's Godhead was only brought into the Church during 
the episcopate of Zephyrinus, a Catholic writer, quoted by Euse- 
bius, observed, by way of reply, that ‘the psalms and hymns 
of the brethren, which, from the earliest days of Christianity, 
had been written by the faithful, all celebrate Christ, the Word 
of God, proclaiming His Divinity®.’ Origen pointed out that 
hymns were addressed only to God and to His Only-begotten 


timus, frater carissime, et repreesentantes vobis per epistolam gaudium 
nostrum, fida obsequia caritatis expromimus ; hic quoque in sacrificiis atque 
in orationibus nostris non cessantes Deo Patri, et Christo Filio Ejus Domino 
nostro gratias agere, et orare pariter ac petere, ut qui perfectus est atque 
perficiens, custodiat et perficiat in vobis confessionis vestre gloriosam 
coronam.’ 

y Arnobius adv. Gentes, i. 36: ‘ Quotidianis supplicationibus adoratis.’ 
And Ibid. i. 39: ‘Neque [Christus] omni illo qui vel maximus potest 
excogitari divinitatis afficiatur cultu?’ [ed. Oehler]. 

2 Lactantius, Div. Inst. iv. 16. 

@ Kus. Hist. Eccl. v. 28: ψαλμοὶ δὲ ὅσοι καὶ goal ἀδελφῶν ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς ὑπὸ 
πιστῶν γραφεῖσαι, τὸν Adyov τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν Χριστὸν ὑμνοῦσι θεολογοῦντε:. 

vil | ce 


386 *Christ adored in the Gloria in Excelsis, 


Word, Who is also God». And the practical value of these hymns 


as teaching the doctrine of Christ’s Deity was illustrated by the 
conduct of Paulus of Samosata. He banished from his own 
and neighbouring churches the psalms which were sung to our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; he spoke of them contemptuously as being 
merely modern compositions. This was very natural in a 
prelate who ‘did not wish to confess with the Church that the 
Son of God had descended from heaven® ;’ but it shews how 
the hymnody of the primitive Church protected and proclaimed 
the truths which she taught and cherished. 

Of the early hymns of the Church of Christ some remain to 
this day among us as witnesses and expressions of her faith in 
Christ’s Divinity. Such are the Tersanctus and the Gloria in 
Excelsis. Both belong to the second century ; both were intro- 
duced, it is difficult to say how early, into the Eucharistic Office ; 
both pay Divine honours to our Blessed Lord. As each morning 
dawned, the Christian of primitive days repeated in private the 
Gloria in Excelsis ; it was his hymn of supplication and praise 
to Christ. How wonderfully does it blend the appeal to our 
Lord’s human sympathies with the confession of His Divine 
prerogatives! ‘O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, 
That takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.’ 
How thrilling is that burst of praise, which at last drowns 
the plaintive notes of entreaty that have preceded it, and hails 
Jesus Christ glorified on His throne in the heights of heaven ! 
‘For Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou 
only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory 
of God the Father.’ Each evening too, in those early times, the 
Christian offered another hymn, le8’s known among ourselves, 
but scarcely less beautiful. It too was addressed to Jesus in 
His majesty :— 


b Contr. Cels. viii. 67: ὕμνους γὰρ εἰς μόνον τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι λέγομεν Θεὸν, καὶ 
τὸν μονογενῆ αὐτοῦ Λόγον καὶ Θεόν" καὶ ὑμνοῦμέν γε Θεὸν καὶ τὸν Μονογενῆ 
αὐτοῦ. 

e Eus. Hist. Eccl. vii. 30: ψαλμοὺς δὲ τοὺς μὲν εἰς τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦν 


Χριστὸν παύσας, ὡς δὴ νεωτέρους καὶ νεωτέρων ἀνδρῶν συγγράμματα. The 


account continues: εἰς ἑαυτὸν δὲ ἐν μέσῃ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, τῇ μεγάλῃ τοῦ πάσχα 
ἡμέρᾳ ψαλμῳδεῖν γυναῖκας παρασκευάζων, ὧν καὶ ἀκούσας ἄν τις φρίξειεν. 
They seem to have sung in this prelate’s own presence, and with his appro- 
bation, odes which greeted him as ‘an angel who had descended from 
heaven,’ although Paulus denied our Lord’s pre-existence. Vanity and un- 
belief are naturally and generally found together. The historian adds ex- 
pressly: τὸν μὲν γὰρ Ὑἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ od βούλεται συνομολογεῖν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ 
κατεληλυθέναι. 


[ LECT. 


and in the Primitive Evening Hymn. 487 


‘Hail! gladdening Light, of His pure glory poured, 
Who is th’ Immortal Father, heavenly, blest, 
Holiest of Holies—Jesus Christ our Lord! 
Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest, 
The lights of evening round us shine, 
We hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Divine! 
Worthiest art Thou at all times to be sung 
With undefiled tongue, 
Son of our God, Giver of life, Alone! 
Therefore in all the world, Thy glories, Lord, they own®.’ 


A yet earlier illustration is afforded by the ode with which the 
Alexandrian Clement concludes his Pedagogus. Although its 
phraseology was strictly adapted to the ‘perfect Gnostic’ at 
Alexandria in the second century, yet it seems to have been 
intended for congregational use. It celebrates our Lord, as 
‘the Dispenser of wisdom,’ ‘the Support of the suffering,’ the 
‘Lord of immortality,’ the ‘Saviour of mortals,’ ‘the Mighty 
Son,’ ‘the God of peace.’ It thrice insists on the ‘ sincerity’ of 
the praise thus offered Him. It concludes :— 


‘Sing we sincerely 

The Mighty Son ; 

We, the peaceful choir, 

We, the Christ-begotten ones, 

We, the people of sober life, 

Sing we together the God of peace®.’ 


Nor may we forget a hymn which, in God’s good providence, 


ἃ Cf, Lyra Apostolica, No. 63. The original is given in Routh’s Reliquie 
Sacr. iii. p. 515 :— 
Φῶς ἱλαρὸν ἁγίας δόξης ἀθανάτου Πατρὸς 
οὐρανίου, ἁγίου, μάκαρος, 
Ἰησοῦ Χριστὲ, 
ἐλθόντες ἐπὶ τοῦ ἡλίου δύσιν, 
ἰδόντες φῶς ἑσπερινὸν, 
ὑμνοῦμεν Πατέρα, καὶ Ὑἱὸν, καὶ Αγιον Πνεῦμα Θεοῦ. 
ἄξιος εἶ ἐν πᾶσι καιροῖς ὑμνεῖσθαι φωναῖς ὅσίαις, 
Tit Θεοῦ, ζωὴν ὃ διδούς" 
διὸ. ὃ κόσμος σε δοξάζει. 
St. Basil quotes it in part, De Spir. Sanct. 73. It is still the Vesper Hymn 
of the Greek Church. 
® Clem. Alex. Peed. iii. 12, fin. p. 313; Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus, 
tom. iii. p. 3. ‘Der Ton des Liedes ist .... gnostisch versinnolichend.’ 
(Fortlage Gesinge Christlicher Vorzeit, p. 357, qu. by Daniel) :— 
μέλπωμεν ἁπλῶς 
παῖδα κρατερόν, 
χορὸς εἰρήνης 
οἱ χριστόγονοι, 
λαὸς σώφρων, 
ψάλλωμεν ὁμοῦ Θεὸν εἰρήνης. 
Vir | Cc2 


388 Adoration of Christ in the Te Deum. 


has been endeared to all of us from childhood. In its present 
form, the Te Deum is clearly Western, whether it belongs to the 
age of St. Augustine, with whose baptism it is connected by the 
popular tradition, or, as is probable, to a later period. But we 
ean scarcely doubt that portions of it are of Eastern origin, and 
that they carry us up wellnigh to the sub-apostolic period. The 
Te Deum is at once a song of praise, a creed, and a supplication. 
In each capacity it is addressed to our Lord. In the Te Deum 
how profound is the adoration offered to Jesus, whether as One 
of the Most Holy Three, or more specially in His Personal dis- 
tinctness as the King of Glory, the Father’s Everlasting Son! 
How touching are the supplications which remind Him that 
when He became incarnate ‘He did not abhor the Virgin’s 
womb,’ that when His Death-agony was passed He ‘ opened the 
kingdom of heaven to all believers!’ How passionate are the 
pleadings that He would ‘help His servants whom He has re- 
deemed with His most precious Blood,’ that He would ‘ make 
them to be numbered with His saints in glory everlasting !’ 
Much of this language is of the highest antiquity ; all of it is 
redolent with the fragrance of the earliest Church ; and, as we 
English Christians use it still in our daily services, we may rejoice 
to feel that it unites us altogether in spirit, and to a great extent 
in the letter, with the Church of the first three centuries‘. 

The Apostolical Constitutions contain ancient doxologies 
which associate Jesus Christ with the Father as ‘inhabiting the 
praises of Israel,’ after the manner of the Gloria Patrig. And 
the Kyrie Eleison, that germinal type of supplication, of which 
the countless litanies of the modern Church are only the varied 
expansions, is undoubtedly sub-apostolic. Together with the 


f On this subject, see Daniel. Thesaur. Hymnolog. tom. ii. pp. 279-299. 

s Constitutiones, viii. 12 (vol. i. p. 482, ed. Labbe), quoted by Bingham: 
παρακαλοῦμέν oe... . ὅπως ἅπαντας ἡμᾶς διατηρήσας ἐν τῇ εὐσεβείᾳ, ἐπι- 
συναγάγῃ" ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ σου τοῦ Θεοῦ πάσης αἰσθητῆς καὶ νοητῆς 
φύσεως, τοῦ βασιλέως ἡμῶν, ἀτῥέπτους, ἀμέμπτους, ἀνεγκλήτους" ὅτι σοι πᾶσα 
δόξα, σέβας καὶ εὐχαριστία, τιμὴ καὶ προσκύνησις τῷ Πατρὶ, καὶ τῷ Ὑἱῷ, καὶ τῷ 
᾿Αγίῳ Πνεύματι καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς ἀνελλειπεῖς καὶ ἀτελευτήτους αἰῶνας 
τῶν αἰῶνων. Ibid. 13 (ρ. 483) : διὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ σου" pel οὗ σοι δόξα, τιμὴ, αἶνος, 
δοξολογία, εὐχαριστία, καὶ τῷ ᾿Αγίῳ Πνεύματι, εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν. Ibid. : 
εὐλογημένος ὃ ἐρχόμενος ἐν ὀνόματι Kupiov Θεὸς, Kupios, καὶ ἐπέφανεν ἡμῖν" 
“Ὡσαννὰ ἐν τοῖς ὑψίστοις. Ibid. 14 (p. 486) : ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Θεῷ τῷ μόνῳ ἂγεν- 
νήτῳ Θεῷ, καὶ τῷ Χριστῷ αὐτοῦ παραθώμεθα. Ibid. 15 (p. 486): πάντας ἡμᾶς 
ἐπισυνάγαγε εἰς τὴν τῶν οὐρανῶν βασιλείαν, ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν' 


μεθ᾽ οὗ σοι δόξα, τιμὴ καὶ σέβας καὶ τῷ ᾿Αγίῳ Πνεύματι εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν. 


Ibid. (p. 487): ὅτι σοι δόξα, αἶνος, μεγαλοπρέπεια, σέβας, προσκύνησις, καὶ τῷ 
σῷ παιδὶ Ἰησοῦ τῷ Χριστῷ σου τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν καὶ Θεῷ καὶ βασιλεῖ, καὶ τῷ 
“Αγίῳ Πνεύματι, νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, ἀμήν. 


ΕΕ 


Se ee χονς 


Eucharistic prayers to Fesus Christ. 5489 


Tersanctus and the Gloria in Excelsis it shews very remarkably, 
by its presence in the Eucharistic Office, how ancient and deeply 
rooted was the Christian practice of prayer to Jesus Christ. 
For the Eucharist has a double aspect: it is a gift from heaven 
to earth, but it is also an offering from earth to heaven. In the 
Eucharist the Christian Church offers to the Eternal Father the 
‘merits and Death of His Son Jesus Christ ;’ since Christ 
Himself has said, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’ The 
canon of Carthage accordingly expresses the more ancient law 
and instinct of the Church: ‘Cum altari adsistitur, semper ad 
Patrem dirigatur oratioh.’ Yet so strong was the impulse to 
offer prayer to Christ, that this canon is strictly observed by no 
single liturgy, while some rites violate it with the utmost con- 
sistency. ‘The Mozarabic rite is a case in point: its collects 
witness to the Church’s long struggle with, and final victory 
over, the tenacious Arianism of Spaini. It might even appear 


h Cone. Carth. iii. c. 23, Labbe, vol. ii. p. 1170. 

i Taking a small part of the Mozarabic Missal, from Advent Sunday to 
Epiphany inclusive, we find sixty cases in which prayer is offered, during the 
altar service, to our Lord. These cases include (1) three ‘ Illations’ or Pre- 
faces, for the third Sunday in Advent, Circumcision, and Epiphany (and part 
at least of this Mass for the Epiphany is considered by Dr. Neale in his 
Essays on Liturgiology, p. 138, to be at least not later ‘than the middle of 
the fourth century’) ; also (2) several prayers in which our Lord’s agency in 
sanctifying the Eucharistic sacrifice, or even in receiving it, is implied—e. g. 
‘ Jesu, bone Pontifex ...... sanctifica hance oblationem;’ or, in a ‘ Post 
Pridie’ for fifth Sunday in Advent: ‘ Hec oblata Tibi . . . . benedicenda 
assume libamina (... . tui Adventtis gloriam, &c.).’ (Miss. Moz. p. 17.) 
So again, on Mid-Lent Sunday: ‘Ecce, Jesu . . . deferimus Tibi hoc sacri- 
ficium nostre redemptionis . ... . accipe hoc sacrificium;’ on which 
Leslie quotes St. Fulgentius, de Fide, c. 19: ‘ Cui (i.e. to the Incarnate 
Son) cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto . . . . sacrificium panis et vini . . . . Ἐδ- 
clesia .. . . offerre non cessat.’? Again, in the Mass for Easter Friday, in 
an ‘ Alia Oratio:’ ‘ Ecce, Jesu Mediator . ... hance Tibi afferimus victi- 
mam sacrificii singularis.” From Palm Sunday to Easter Day inclusive, the 
prayers offered to Christ, according to this Missal, are twenty-nine. The zeal 
of the Spanish Church for the Divinity of the Holy Spirit is remarkably 
shewn in a ‘Post Pridie’ for Whitsunday: ‘Suscipe ... . . Spiritus 
Sancte, omnipotens Deus, sacrificia ;? on which Leslie’s note says, ‘ Ariani 
negabant sacrificium debere Dei Filio offerri, aut Spiritui Sancto. . . . contra 
quos Catholici Gotho-Hispani Filio et Spiritui Sancto sacrifictum Eucharisti- 
cum distincté offerunt ; and he proceeds to quote another passage from Ful- 
gentius that worship and sacrifice were offered alike to all the Three Persons, 
‘hoc est, Sanctz Trinitati.’ The Gallican Liturgies, though in a less degree, 
exhibit the same feature of Eucharistic prayer to our Lord. In the very old 
series of fragmentary Masses, discovered by Mone, and edited by the Rev. 
G. H. Forbes and Dr. Neale (in Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church, 
ὑπὸ i.), as the ‘Missale Richenovense’ (from ‘the abbey οὗ Reichenau, 
VII 


390 «© Exucharistic prayers to Fesus Christ. 


to substitute for the rule laid down at Carthage, the distinct 
but (considering the indivisible relation of the Three Holy 
Persons to each other) perfectly consistent principle that the 
Eucharist is offered to the Holy Trinity. This too would seem 
to be the mind of the Eastern Church’. It is unnecessary to 
observe that at this day, both in the Eucharistic Service and 
elsewhere, prayer to Jesus Christ is as integral a feature of the 
devotional system of the Church of England, as it was of the 


where they were found), there are four cases of prayer to Christ; one of 
them, in the ninth Mass, being in a ‘ Contestatio’ or Preface. In the 
‘Gothic’ (or southern-Gallic) Missal, prayer is made to Him about seventy- 
six times. Some of these cases are very striking. Thus on Christmas Day, 
‘ Suscipe, . . . . Domine Jesu, omnipotens Deus, sacrificium laudis ob- 
latum.’ (Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 521; Forbes and Neale, p. 35.) The 
‘Immolatio’ (another term for the Contestatio) of Palm Sunday is ad- 
dressed to Christ. The ‘Old Gallican’ Missal, belonging to central Gaul, 
has sixteen cases of prayer to Him, including the ‘ Immolatio’ of Easter 
Saturday. The ‘Gallican Sacramentary’ (called also the Sacramentarium 
Bobiense, and by Mr. Forbes, the Missal of Besangon) has twenty-eight 
such cases, including three Contestations, The Canon of the Ambrosian Rite 
has prayers to Christ. 

k The principle affirmed in the old Spanish rite, that the Eucharist was to 
be offered to the whole Trinity, and therefore to the Son, is also affirmed in 
the daily Liturgy of the Eastern Church. The prayer of the Cherubic 
Hymn, which indeed was not originally a part of St. Chrysostom’s Liturgy, 
having been inserted in it not earlier than Justinian’s reign, has this con- 
clusion: Σὺ yap εἶ ὃ προσφέρων καὶ προσφερόμενος, καὶ προσδεχόμενος, καὶ 
διαδιδόμενος, Χριστὲ ὃ Θεὸς ἡμῶν, καὶ σοὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀναπέμπομεν κ.τ.λ. 
About 1155 a dispute arose as to προσδεχόμενος, and Soterichus Panteugenus, 
©atriarch-elect of Antioch, who taught that the sacrifice was not offered to the 
Son, but only to the Father and the Holy Spirit, was condemned in a council 
at Constantinople, 1156. ‘This,’ says Neale (Introd. to East. Church, 
i. 434), ‘ was the end of the controversy that for more than seven hundred 
years had vexed the Church on the subject of the Incarnation.’ Between 
this event and the condemnation of Monothelitism, Neale reckons the con- 
demnation of Adoptionism, in 794. Compare also, in the present Liturgy 
of St. James, a prayer just before the ‘Sancta Sanctis,’ addressed to our 
Lord, in which the phrase occurs, ‘ Thy holy and bloodless sacrifices.’ The 
same Liturgy has other prayers addressed to Him. In St. Mark’s Liturgy, 
among other prayers to Christ, one runs thus, ‘Shew Thy face on this bread 
and these cups.’ After the Lord’s Prayer, the Deacon says, ‘ Bow your heads 
to Jesus,’ and the response is, ‘To Thee, O Lord.’ In fact, the East seems 
never to have acepted the maxim that Eucharistic prayer was always addressed 
to the Father. Our ‘ Prayer of St. Chrysostom,’ addressed to the Son, is the 
‘ prayer of the third Antiphon’ in Lit. St. Chrys. ; and the same rite, and the 
Armenian, have the remarkable prayer, ‘ Attend, O Lord Jesus Christ our 
eS ee and come to sanctify us,’ &c. In the Coptic Liturgy of 
St. Basil, our Lord is besought to send down the Spirit on the elements. 
The present Roman rite has three prayers to Christ between the ‘ Agnus Dei’ 
and the ‘ Panem ccelestem.’ 

[ LECT, 


Pagan observations on the worship of Fesus. 391 


ancient, or as it is of the contemporary Use of Western 
Christendom!. 

Nor was the worship of Jesus Christ by the early Christians 
an esoteric element of their religious activity, obvious only to 
those who were within the Church, who cherished her creed, and 
who took part in her services. It was not an abstract doctrine, 
but a living and notorious practice, daily observed by, and 
. recommended to, Christians. As such it challenged the ob- 
servation of the heathen from a very early date. It is probable 
indeed that the Jews, as notably on the occasion of St. Poly- 
carp’s martyrdom™, drew the attention of pagan magistrates to 
the worship of Jesus, in order to stir up contempt and hatred 
against the Christians. But such a worship was of itself calcu- 
lated to strike the administrative instincts of Roman magistrates 
as an unauthorized addition to the registered religions of the 
empire, even before they had discovered it to'be irreconcileable 
with public observance of the established state ceremonies, and 
specially with any acknowledgment of the divinity of the reign- 
ing emperor. The younger Pliny is drawing up a report for the 
eye of his imperial master Trajan ; and he writes with the cold 
impartiality of a pagan statesman who is permitting himself to 
take a distant philosophical interest in the superstitions of the 
lower orders. Some apostates from the Church had been 
brought before his tribunal, and he had questioned them as to 
the practices of the Christians in Asia Minor. It appeared that 
on a stated day the Christians met before daybreak, and sang 
among themselves, responsively, a hymn to Christ as God». 
Here it should be noted that Pliny is not recording a vague 
report, but a definite statement, elicited from several persons in 
cross-examination, moreover touching a point which, in dealing 
with a Roman magistrate, they might naturally have desired 
to keep in the background®. Again, the emperor Adrian, when 


1 See Note F in Appendix. m Martyr. St. Polyc. c. 17. 

" Plin. Ep. lib. x. ep. 97: ‘ Alii ab indice nominati esse se Christianos 
dixerunt, et mox negaverunt; fuisse quidem sed desiisse ; quidam ante 
triennium, quidam ante plures annos, non nemo etiam ante viginti quoque. 
Omnes et imaginem tuam, deorumque simulacra venerati sunt, ii et Christo 
maledixerunt. Adfirmabant autem, hanc fuisse summam vel culpz sue vel 
erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo, 
quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem, seque sacramento non in scelus aliquod 
obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent.’ 

9 That the ‘carmen’ was an incantation, or that Christ was saluted as a 
hero, not as a Divine Person, are glosses upon the sense of this passage, rather 
than its natural meaning. See Augusti, Denkwiirdigkeiten, tom. v. p. 33. 


VII | 


392 Sarcastic remarks of Lucian. 


writing to Servian, describes the population of Alexandria as 
divided between the worship of Christ and the worship of 
Serapis?, That One Who had been adjudged by the law to 
death as a criminal should receive Divine honours, must have 
been sufficiently perplexing to the Roman official mind ; but it 
was much less irritating to the statesmen than to the philoso- 
phers. In his life of the fanatical cynic and apostate Christian, 
Peregrinus Proteus, whose voluntary self-immolation he himself 
witnessed at Olympia in A.D. 165, Lucian gives vent to the con- 
temptuous sarcasm which was roused in him, and in men like 
him, by the devotions of the Church. ‘The Christians,’ he 
says, ‘are still worshipping that great man who was gibbeted 
in Palestined.’ He complains that the Christians are taught 
that they stand to each other in the relation of brethren, as soon 
as they have broken loose from the prevailing customs, and 
have denied the gods of Greece, and have taken to the adoration 
of that impaled Sophist of theirs. The Celsus with whom we 
meet in the treatise of Origen may or may not have been the 
friend of Lucian’. Celsus, it has been remarked, represents 
a class of intellects which is constantly found among the 
opponents of Christianity ; Celsus has wit and acuteness without 
moral earnestness or depth of research ; he looks at things only 
on the surface, and takes delight in constructing and putting 
forward difficulties and contradictionst. The worship of our 
Lord was certain to engage the perverted ingenuity of a mind of 
this description ; and Celsus attacks the practice upon a variety 
of grounds which are discussed by Origen. The general position 
taken up by Celsus is that the Christians had no right to 
denounce the polytheism of the pagan world, since their own 
worship of Christ was essentially polytheistic. It was absurd 
in the Christians, he contends, to point at the heathen gods as 
idols, whilst they worshipped One Who was in a much more 
wretched condition than the idols, and indeed was not even an 


P Apud Lamprid. in vita Alex. Severi: ‘ab aliis Serapidem, ab aliis adorari 
Christum.’ 

4 De Morte Peregrini, c. 11: τὸν μέγαν οὖν ἐκεῖνον ἔτι σέβουσιν ἄνθρωπον, 
τὸν ἐν Παλαιστίνῃ ἄνασκολοπισθέντα. 

? Thid. c. 13: ἐπειδὰν ἅπαξ παραβάντες, θεοὺς μὲν Ἑλληνικοὺς ἀπαρνήσων- 
ται, τὸν δ᾽ ἀνεσκολοπισμένον ἐκεῖνον σοφιστὴν αὐτῶν προσκυνῶσι. 

® Neander decides in the negative (Ch. Hist. i. 225 sqq.), (1) on the 
ground of the vehemence of the opponent of Origen, as contrasted with the 
moderation of the friend of Lucian ; (2) because the friend of Lucian was 
an Epicurean, the antagonist of Origen a neo-Platonist. 

t See the remarks of Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. i. p. 227, ed. Bohn. 

LECT. 


fierce indignation of Celsus. 393 


idol at all, since He was a mere corpse%. The Christians, he 
urges, worshipped no God, no, not even a demon, but only 
a dead man*. If the Christians were bent upon religious in- 
novations ; if Hercules, and Asculapius, and the gods who had 
been of old held in honour, were not to their taste; why could 
they not have addressed themselves to such distinguished mortals 
as Orpheus, or Anaxarchus, or Epictetus, or the Sybil? Nay, 
would it not have been better to have paid their devotions to 
some of their own prophets, to Jonah under the gourd, or to 
Daniel in the lion’s den, than to a man who had lived an infa- 
mous life, and had died a miserable death y? In thus honouring 
a Jew Who had been apprehended and put to death, the Chris- 
tians were no better than the Getz who worshipped Zamolxis, 
than the Cilicians who adored Mopsus, than the Acarnanians 
who prayed to Amphilochus, than the Thebans with their cultus 
of Amphiaraus, than the Lebadians who were so devoted to 
Trophonius?. Was it not absurd in the Christians to ridicule 
the heathen for the devotion which they paid to Jupiter on the 
score of the exhibition of his sepulchre in Crete, while they 
themselves adored One Who was Himself only a tenant of the 
tomb#? Above all, was not the worship of Christ fatal to the 
Christian doctrine of the Unity of God? If the Christians 
really worshipped no God but One, then their reasoning against | 
the heathen might have had force in it. But while they offer an 

excessive adoration to this Person Who has but lately appeared 
in the world, how can they think that they commit no offence 
against God, by giving these Divine honours to His Servant? ἢ 


ἃ Contr. Cels. vii. 40, p. 722: ἵνα μὴ παντάπασιν ἦτε καταγέλαστοι τοὺς 
μὲν ἄλλους, τοὺς δεικνυμένους θεοὺς, ws εἴδωλα βλασφημοῦντες" τὸν δὲ καὶ 
αὐτῶν ὡς ἀληθῶς εἰδώλων ἀθλιώτερον, καὶ μηδὲ εἴδωλον ἔτι, GAA’ ὄντως νεκρὸν, 
σέβοντες, καὶ Πατέρα ὅμοιον αὐτῷ ζητοῦντες. 

x Tbid. vii. 68, p. 742: διελέγχονται σαφῶς οὐ Θεὸν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ δαίμονα 
ἀλλὰ νεκρὸν σέβοντεΞ. 

y Ibid. vii. 53, p. 732: πόσῳ δ᾽ ἦν ὑμῖν ἄμεινον, ἐπειδή ye καινοτομῆσαί 
τι ἐπεθυμήσατε, περὶ ἄλλον τινὰ τῶν γενναίως ἀποθανόντων, καὶ θεῖον μῦθον 
δέξασθαι δυναμένων, σπουδάσαι ; Φέρε, εἰ μὴ ἤρεσκεν Ἡρακλῆς, καὶ ᾿Ασκλη- 
mids, καὶ of πάλαι δεδοξασμένοι, ᾿᾽Ορφέα εἴχετε x.7.A. Cf. 57. 

5 Tbid. iii. 34, p. 469: μετὰ ταῦτα “παραπλήσιον Huds’ οἴεται “πεποιηκέναι, 
τὸν (ὥς φησιν ὃ ΚέλσοΞ) ἁλόντα καὶ ἀποθανόντα θρησκεύοντας,᾽ τοῖς Γέταις 
σέβουσι τὸν Ζάμολξιν, καὶ Κίλιξι τὸν Μόψον, καὶ ᾿Ακαρνᾶσι τὸν ᾿Αμφίλοχον, 
καὶ Θηβαίοις τὸν ᾿Ασφιάρεων, καὶ Λεβαδίοις τὸν Τροφώνιον." 

ἃ bid. iii. 43, p. 475: μετὰ ταῦτα λέγει περὶ ἡμῶν “ ὅτι καταγελῶμεν 
τῶν προσκυνούντων τὸν Δία, ἐπεὶ τάφος αὐτοῦ ἐν Κρήτῃ δείκνυται" καὶ οὐδὲν 
ἧττον σέβομεν τὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ τάφου᾽ K.T.A. 

Ὁ Ibid. viii. 12, p. 750: δόξαι δ᾽ ἄν τις ἐξῆς τούτοις πιθανόν τι καθ᾽ ἡμῶν 
ὙΠ ] 


394 Lhe worship of Christ defended by Origen, 


In his replies Origen entirely admits the fact upon which 
Celsus comments in this lively spirit of raillery. He does not 
merely admit that prayer to Christ was the universal practice of 
the Church ; he energetically justifies it. .When confronting the 
heathen opponent of his Master’s honour, Origen writes as the 
Christian believer, rather than as the philosophizing Alex- 
andrian®. He deals with the language of Celsus patiently and 
in detail. The objects of heathen worship were unworthy of 
worship ; the Jewish prophets had no claim to it ; Christ was 
worshipped as the Son of God, as God Himself. ‘If Celsus,’ 
he says, ‘had understood the meaning of this, “I and the Father 
are One,” or what the Son of God says in His prayer, “ As I and 
Thou are One,” he would never have imagined that we worship 
any but the God Who is over all ; for Christ says, “The Father 
is in Me and I in Him4.”’ Origen then proceeds, although by 
a questionable analogy, to guard this language against a Sabellian 
construction : the worship addressed to Jesus was addressed to 
Him as personally distinct from the Father. Origen indeed, in 
vindicating this worship of our Lord, describes it elsewhere as 
prayer in an improper sense®, on the ground that true prayer is 
offered to the Father only. This has been explained to relate 
only to the mediatorial aspect of His Manhood as our High 
Priestf; and Bishop Bull further understands him to argue that 
the Father, as the Source of Deity, is ultimately the Object of 
all adorations. But Origen entirely admits the broad fact that 
Jesus received Divine honours ; and he defends such worship of 
Jesus as being an integral element of the Church’s life}, 


λέγειν ἐν τῷ, “Εἰ μὲν δὴ μηδένα ἄλλον ἐθεράπευον οὗτοι πλὴν ἕνα Θεὸν, ἦν ἄν 
τις αὐτοῖς tows πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ἀτενὴς λόγος᾽ νυνὶ δὲ τὸν ἔναγχος φανέντα 
τοῦτον ὑπερθρησκεύουσι, καὶ ὅμως οὐδὲν πλημμελεῖν νομίζουσι περὶ τὸν Θεὸν, εἰ 
καὶ ὑπηρέτης αὐτοῦ θεραπευθήσεται.᾽ , 

¢ See however Contr. Cels, v.11, sub fin. p. 585, where, nevertheless, the con- 
clusion of the passage shews his real mind in De Orat. c. 15, quoted above. 

ἃ Contr. Cels. viii. 12, p. 750: εἴπερ νενοήκει ὃ Κέλσος τό" “᾿Εγὼ καὶ 6 
Πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν" καὶ τὸ ἐν εὐχῇ εἰρημένον ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν τῷ" “Ὡς 
ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ ἕν ἐσμεν, οὐκ ἂν ᾧετο ἡμᾶς καὶ ἄλλον θεραπεύειν, παρὰ τὸν ἐπὶ 
πᾶσι Θεόν. “ Ὁ γὰρ Πατὴρ, φησὶν, ‘ ἐν ἐμοὶ, κἀγὼ ἐν τῷ Πατρί.᾽ 

© Ibid. v. 4: τῆς περὶ προσευχῆς κυριολεξίας καὶ καταχρήσεως. 

f ΤΡΙᾺ. viii. 13, 16. ‘ Loquitur de Christo,’ says Bishop Bull, ‘ ut Summo 
Sacerdote.’ Def. Fid. Nic. ii. 9, 15. 

& Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. sect. ii. c.9, n. 15: ‘Sin Filiwm intueamur relaté, 
qua Filius est, et ex Deo Patre trahit originem, tum rursus certum est, 
cultum et venerationem omnem, quem ipsi deferimus, ad Patrem redundare, 
in ipsumque, ut πηγὴν θεότητος ultimo referri.’ 

h See Reading’s note on Orig. de Orat. § 15. 


ἜΡΟΝ 


by Lactantius and Arnobius. 395 


The stress of heathen criticism, however, still continued to 
be directed against the adoration of our Lord. ‘Our gods,’ so 
ran the heathen language of a later day, ‘are not displeased 
with you Christians for worshipping the Almighty God. But 
you maintain the Deity of One Who was born as a man, and 
Who was put to death by the punishment of the cross (a mark 
of infamy reserved for criminals of the worst kind) ; you believe 
Him to be still alive, and you adore Him with daily suppli- 
cations!” ‘The heathen,’ observes Lactantius, ‘throw in our 
teeth the Passion of Christ ; they say that we worship a Man, 
and a Man too Who was put to death by men under circum- 
stances of ignominy and torturek.’ lLactantius and Arnobius 
reply to the charge in precisely the same manner. They admit 
the truth of Christ’s Humanity, and the shame of His Passion ; 
but they earnestly assert His literal and absolute Godhead. 
However the heathen might scorn, the Godhead of Christ was 
the great certainty upon which the eye of His Church was 
persistently fixed ; it was the truth by which her practice of 
adoring Him was necessarily determined |, 

If the Gospel had only enjoined the intellectual acceptance of 
some philosophical theistic theory, its popular impotence would 
have earned the toleration which is easily secured by cold, 
abstract, passionless religions. In that case it would never 
have provoked the earnest scorn of a Lucian or of a Celsus. 
They would have condoned or passed it by, even if they had 


i Arnob. adv. Gentes, i. 36: ‘ Sed non idcirco Dii vobis infesti sunt, quod 
omnipotentem colatis Deum: sed quod hominem natum, et (quod personis 
infame est vilibus) crucis supplicio interemptum, et Deum fuisse contenditis, 
et superesse adhuc creditis, et quotidianis supplicationibus adoratis.’ 

k Lact. Div. Inst. iv. 16: ‘ Venio nunc ad ipsam Passionem, que velut 
opprobrium nobis objectari solet, quod et hominem, et ab hominibus insigni 
supplicio adfectum et excruciatum colamus: ut doceam eam ipsam Passionem 
ab Eo cum magna et divina ratione susceptam, et in ea sola et virtutem, et 
veritatem, et sapientiam contineri.’ 

1 Arnob. adv. Gentes, i. 42: ‘Natum hominem colimus. Etiamsi esset 
id verum, locis ut in superioribus dictum est, tamen pro multis et tam liber- 
alibus donis, que ab eo profecta in nobis sunt, Deus dici appellarique deberet. 
Cum vero Deus sit re certa, et sine ullius rei dubitationis ambiguo, inficiaturos 
arbitramini nos esse, quam maxime illum a nobis coli, et przsidem nostri 
corporis nuncupari? Ergone, inquiet aliquis furens, iratus, et percitus, Deus 
ille est Christus? Deus, respondebimus, et interiorum potentiarum Deus ; 
et quod magis infidos acerbissimis doloribus torqueat, rei maximz causa 
asummo Rege ad nos missus.’ Lact. Div. Inst. iv. 29: ‘Quum dicimus 
Deum Patrem et Deum Filium, non diversum dicimus, nec utrumque secer- 
nimus : Siquidem nec Pater sine Filio nuncupari, nec Filius potest sine Patre 
generari. 


vil | 


396 Pagan caricature of the adoration of Fesus. 


not cared to patronize it. But the continuous adoration of 
Jesus by His Church made the neutrality of such men as these 
morally impossible. 'They knew what it meant, this worship of 
the Crucified ; it was too intelligible, too soul-enthralling, to be 
ignored or to be tolerated. And the lowest orders of the popu- 
lace were for many long years, just as intelligently hostile to it 
as were the philosophers. Witness that remarkable caricature 
of the adoration of our crucified Lord, which was discovered not 
long since beneath the ruins of the Palatine palace™. It is a 
rough sketch, traced, in all probability, by the hand of some 
pagan slave in one of the earliest years of the third century of 
our era®, A human figure with an ass’s head is represented as 


m See ‘Deux Monuments des Premiers Sitcles de l’Eglise expliqués, par 
le P. Raphaél Garrucci, Rome, 1862. He describes the discovery and 
appearance of this ‘Graffito Blasfemo’ as follows:—‘ Comme tant d’autres 
ruines, le palais des Césars récélait aussi de nombreuses inscriptions dictées 
par le caprice. Aprés avoir recueilli celles qui couvraient les parois de toute 
une salle, nous arrivimes & trouver quelques paroles grecques, inscrites au 
sommet d’un mur enseveli sous les décombres. Ce fut J& un précieux indice 
qui nous fit poursuivre nos recherches. Bientdt apparut le contour d’une téte 
d’animal sur un corps humain, dont les bras étaient étendus comme ceux des 
orantes dans les Catacombes. La découverte paraissait avoir un haut intérét: 
aussi Mgr. Milesi, Ministre des travaux publics, nous autorisa-t-il, avec sa 


bienveillance accoutumée, ἃ faire enlever la terre et les débris qui encom- 


braient cette chambre, le 11 Novembre, 1857. Nous ne tard&mes point ἃ 
contempler une image que ces ruines avaient conservée intacte & travers les 
siécles, et dont nous pfimes relever un calque fidéle. 

‘Elle réprésente une croix, dont la forme est celle du Taw grec, surmonté 
d’une cheville qui porte une tablette. Un homme est attaché ἃ cette croix, 
mais la téte de cette figure n’est point humaine, c’est celle du cheval ou 
plutét de Yonagre. Le crucifié est revétu de la tunique de dessous, que les 
anciens désignaient sous le nom d’interula, et d'une autre tunique sans 
ceinture ; des bandes appelées crwrales enveloppent la partie inférieure des 
jambes. A la gauche du spectateur, on voit un autre personnage, qui sous le 
méme vétement, semble converser avec la monstrueuse image, et éléve vers 
elle sa main gauche, dont les doigts sont separés. A droite, au dessus de la 
- croix, se lit la lettre Y ; et au dessous, l’inscription suivante : 

AAEZAMENOS SEBETE (pour SEBETAI) 
ΘΕΟΝ ἷ 
Alexamenos adore son Dieu.’ 

For the reference to this interesting paper I am indebted to the kindness 
of Professor Westwood. See also Archdeacon Wordsworth’s Tour in Italy, 
ii. p. 143. 

M P. Garucci fixes this date on the following grounds: (1) Inscriptions on 
tiles and other fragments of this part of the Palatine palace shew that it was 
constructed during the reign of the Emperor Adrian. The dates 123 and 126 
are distinctly ascertained. (Deux Monuments, &c., p. 10.) The inscription 
therefore is not earlier than this date. (2) The calumny of the worship of 
the ass’s head by the Christians is not mentioned by any of the Apologists 


[ LECT. 


The ‘ graffito blasfemo’ of the Palatine. 397 


fixed to a cross; while another figure in a tunic stands on one 
side. This figure is addressing himself to the crucified monster, 
and is making a gesture which was the customary pagan ex- 
pression of adoration. Underneath there runs a rude inscrip- 
tion: Alexamenos adores his God. Here we are face to face with 
a touching episode of the life of the Roman Church in the days 
of Severus or of Caracalla. As under Nero, so, a century and a 
half later, there were worshippers of Christ in the household of 
the Cesar. But the paganism of the later date was more in- 
telligently and bitterly hostile to the Church than the paganism 
which had shed the blood of the Apostles. The Gnostic invec- 
tive which attributed to the Jews the worship of an ass, was 
applied by the pagans with facile indifference both to Jews and 
Christians. Tacitus attributes the custom to a legend respecting 
services rendered by wild asses to the Israelites in the desert ° ; 
‘and so, I suppose,’ observes Tertullian, ‘it was thence presumed 
that we, as bordering on the Jewish religion, were taught to 
worship such a figureP.’ A story of this kind once current, was 


who precede Tertullian, nor by any who succeed Minucius Felix ; which may 
be taken to prove that this misrepresentation of Christian worship was only 
in vogue among pagan critics in Rome and Africa at the close of the second 
and at the beginning of the third century. (3) It is certain from Tertullian 
that there were Christians in the imperial palace during the reign of the 
Emperor Severus: ‘Even Severus himself, the father of Antoninus, was 
mindful of the Christians ; for he sought out Proculus a Christian, who was 
surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euodia, who had once cured him by 
means of oil, and kept him in his own palace, even to his death: whom also 
Antoninus very well knew, nursed as he was upon Christian milk.’ Ad Scapu- 
lam, c. 4. Caracalla’s playmate was a Christian boy; see Dr. Pusey’s note 
on Tertull. p. 148, Oxf. Tr. Libr. Fath. (4) ‘Rien dans le monument du 
Palatin ne contredit cette opinion, ni la paléographie, qui trahit la méme 
époque, tant ἃ cause de l’usage simultané de l’r carré et de 1 Ἐ semicirculaire 
dans la méme inscription, que par la forme générale des lettres; ni moins 
encore l’ortographe, car on sait que le changement de l’ar en E a plus d’un 
exemple ἃ Rome, méme sur les monuments grecs du régne d’Auguste. Enfin 
les autres inscriptions grecques de cette chambre, qui sans préjudice pour 
notre thése, pourraient étre d’une autre temps, ne font naitre aucune difficulté 
sérieuse, étant parfaitement semblables ἃ celle dont nous nous occupons.’ 
Garucci, Ibid. p. 13. 

° Tac. Hist. v.c. 4. He had it probably from Apion; see Josephus, c. 
Ap. ii. το. It is repeated by Plutarch, Symp. iv. 5: τὸν ὄνον ἀναφήναντα 
αὐτοῖς πηγὴν ὕδατος τιμῶσι. And by Democritus: Χρυσῆν ὄνου κεφαλὴν 
προσεκύνουν. Apud Suidas, voc. *Iovdds. 

P Apolog. 16. Tertullian refutes Tacitus by referring to his own account 
of the examination of the Jewish temple by Cn. Pompeius after his capture of 
Jerusalem ; Pompey ‘found no image’ in the temple. For proof that the 
early Christians were constantly identified with the Jews by the pagan world, 
see Τ᾽ Pusey’s note on Tert. ubi supra, in the Oxf. Tr. Libr. Fath. 

VII 


398 Sesus Christ adored by carly Martyrs. 


easily adapted to the purposes of a pagan caricaturist. Whether 
from ignorance of the forms of Christian worship, or in order to 
make his parody of it more generally intelligible to the pagan 
public, the draughtsman has ascribed to Alexamenos the gestures 
of a heathen devotee%. But the real object of this coarse cari- 
cature is too plain to be mistaken. Jesus Christ, we may be sure, 
had other confessors and worshippers in the imperial palace 
who knelt side by side with Alexamenos. The moral pressure 
of the advancing Church was making itself felt throughout 
all ranks of pagan society; ridicule was invoked to do the 
work of argument; and the social persecution which crowned 
all true Christian devotion was often only the prelude to a 
sterner test of that loyalty to a crucified Lord, which could meet 


heathen scorn with the strength of patient faith, and heathen 


cruelty with the courage of heroic endurance. 


The death-cry of the martyrs must have familiarized the 


heathen mind with the honour paid to the Redeemer by Chris- 
tians. Of the worship offered in the Catacombs, of the stern 
yet tender discipline whereby the early Church stimulated, 
guided, moulded the heavenward aspirations of her children, 
paganism knew, could know, nothing. But the bearing and 
the exclamations of heroic servants of Christ when arraigned 
before the tribunals of the empire, or when exposed to a death 
of torture and shame in the amphitheatres, were matters of 
public notoriety. The dying prayers of St. Stephen expressed 
the instinct, if they did not provoke the imitation, of many a 
martyr of later days. What matters it to Blandina of Lyons 
that her pagan persecutors have first entangled her limbs in 
the meshes of a large net, and then have exposed her to the 
fury of a wild bull? She is insensible to pain ; she is entranced 
in a profound communion with Christ'. What matters it to 
that servant-boy in Palestine, Porphyry, that his mangled body 
is ‘committed to a slow fire?’ He does but call more earnestly 
in his death-struggle upon Jesus’. Felix, an African bishop, 
after a long series of persecutions, has been condemned to be 
beheaded at Venusium for refusing to give up the sacred books 


ᾳ Job xxxi. 27. St. Hieronym. in Oseam, c. 13: Qui adorant solent 
deosculari manum suam.’ Comp. Minuce. Fel. Oct. c. 2. 

τ Eus. Hist. Eee. v. I: εἰς γύργαθον βληθεῖσα, ταύρῳ παρεβλήθη" καὶ ἱκανῶς 
ἀναβληθεῖσα πρὸς τοῦ ζώου, μηδὲ αἴσθησιν ἔτι τῶν συμβαινόντων ἔχουσα διὰ 
τὴν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐποχὴν τῶν πεπιστευμένων καὶ ὁμίλιαν πρὸς Χριστόν. 

8 Ibid. Mart. Pal. 11: καθαψαμένης αὐτοῦ τῆς φλογὺς ἀπέῤῥηξε φωνὴν, τὸν 
Ὑἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦν βοηθὸν ἐπιβοώμενος. 

[ LECT. 


ees Soe «πὰ 


The Martyrs pray to Fesus in their agony. 399 


to the proconsul. ‘Raising his eyes to heaven, he said with a 
clear voice... “O Lord God of heaven and earth, Jesu Christ, 
to Thee do I bend my neck by way of sacrifice, Ὁ Thou Who 
abidest for ever, to Whom belong glory and majesty, world 
without end. Ament.”’ Theodotus of Ancyra has been betrayed 
by the apostate Polychronius, and is joining in a last prayer with 
the sorrowing Church. ‘Lord Jesu Christ,’ he cries, ‘Thou 
Hope of the hopeless, grant that I may finish the course of my 
conflict, and offer the shedding of my blood as a libation and 
sacrifice, to the relief of all those who suffer for Thee.. Do Thou 
lighten their burden ; and still this tempest of persecution, that 
all who believe in Thee may enjoy rest and quietness¥.’ And 
afterwards, in the extremity of his torture, he prays thus: ‘Lord 
Jesu Christ, Thou Hope of the hopeless, hear my prayer, and 
assuage this agony, seeing that for Thy Name’s sake I suffer 
thus*.’ And when the pain had failed to bend his resolution, 
and the last sentence had been pronounced by the angry judge, 
‘O Lord Jesu Christ,’ the martyr exclaims, ‘Thou Maker of 
heaven and earth, Who forsakest not them that put their hope 
in Thee, I give Thee thanks for that Thou hast made me meet 
to be citizen of Thy heavenly city, and to have a share in Thy 
kingdom. I give Thee thanks, that Thou hast given me strength 
to conquer the dragon, and to bruise his head. Give rest unto 
Thy servants, and stay the fierceness of the enemies in my 


* Ruinart, Acta Martyrum Sincera, ed. Verone, 1731, p. 314. Acta 
S. Felicis Episcopi, anno 303: ‘Felix Episcopus, elevans oculos in ccelum, 
clar& voce dixit, Deus, gratias Tibi. Quinquaginta et sex annos habeo in hoe 
seculo. Virginitatem custodivi. Evangelia servavi, fidem et veritatem pre- 
dicavi. Domine Deus celi et terre, Jesu Christe, Tibi cervicem meam ad 
victimam flecto, Qui permanes in eternum ; Cui est claritas et magnificentia 
in seecula seculorum. Amen.’ 

ἃ Tbid. p. 303, Passio 8. Theodoti Ancyrani, et septem virginum: ‘Theo- 
dotus, valedicens fratribus, jubensque ne ab oratione cessarent, sed Deum 
orarent ut corona ipsi obtingeret, preeparavit se ad verbera sustinenda. Simul 
igitur perstiterunt in oratione cum martyre, qui prolixe precatus, tandem ait: 
Domine Jesu Christe, spes desperatorum, da mihi certaminis cursum perficere, 
et sanguinis effustonem pro sacrificio et libatione offerre, omnium eorum causa 
qua propter Te afliguntur. Alleva onus eorum ; et compesce tempestatem, ut 
requie et profunddé tranquillitate potiantur omnes qui in Te credunt.’ 

x Ibid. p. 307: ‘ Videns ergo Preses se frustra laborare, et fatigatos 
tortores deficere ; depositum de ligno jussit super ignitas testulas collocari. 
Quibus etiam interiora corporis penetrantibus gravissimum dolorem sentiens 
Theodotus, oravit dicens, Domine Jesu Christe, spes desperatorum, exaudi 
orationem meam, et cruciatum hunc mitiga; quia propter ΤΌΝ Sanctum 
Tuum ἰδέα patior. 

VII | 


- ᾿ 


Ν ; ἰὸς Ξ 
- ν ἘΝ . . 
2 A 
. u Oe 
P 
j 


400 Lhe Martyrs pray to Fesus in their agony. 


person. Give peace unto Thy Church, and set her free from 
the tyranny of the devil 9.’ 

Thus it was that the martyrs prayed ‘and died. Their voices 
reach us across the chasm of intervening centuries ; but time 
cannot impair the moral majesty, or weaken the accents of their 
strong and simple conviction. One after another their piercing 
words, in which the sharpest human agony is so entwined with 
a superhuman faith, fall upon our ears. “Ὁ Christ, Thou Son 
of God, deliver Thy servants 5. ‘QO Lord Jesu Christ, we are 
Christians ; Thee do we serve; Thou art our Hope; Thou art 
the Hope of Christians; Ὁ God Most Holy, Ὁ God Most 
High, O God Almighty®.” ‘O Christ,’ cries a martyr again 
and again amidst his agonies, ‘O Christ, let me not be con- 
founded,’ ‘Help, I pray Thee, O Christ, have pity. Pre- 
serve my soul, guard my spirit, that I be not ashamed. I pray 
Thee, O Christ, grant me power of endurance®.’ ‘I pray Thee, 
Christ, hear me. I thank Thee, my God ; command that I be 


¥ Ruinart, Acta, p. 307: ‘Cumque ad locum pervenissent, orare ‘coepit 
Martyr in hee verba: Domine Jesu Christe, celi terrceeque conditor, qui non 
derelinquis sperantes in Te, gratias Tibi ago, quia fecistt me dignum ceelestis 
Tuc Urbis civem, Tuique regni consortem. Gratias Tibi ago, quia donasti 
mihi draconem vincere, et caput ejus conterere. Da requiem servis Tuis, atque 
in me siste violentiam tnimicorum. Da Ecclesie Tuce pacem, eruens eam ἃ 
tyrannide diaboli.’ 

z Ibid. p. 340; Acta SS. Saturnini, Dativi, et aliorum plurimorum 
martyrum in Africé, a. 304: ‘Thelica martyr, media de ips& carnificum rabie 
hujusmodi preces Domino cum gratiarum actione effundebat: Deo gratias. 
In Nomine Tuo, Christe Dei Fili, libera servos Tuos.’ 

@ Ibid.: ‘Cum ictibus ungularum concussa fortius latera sulcarentur, proflu- 
ensque sanguinis unda violentis tractibus emanaret, Proconsulem sibi dicentem 
audivit: Incipies sentire que vos pati oporteat. Et adjecit: Ad gloriam. Gra- 
tias ago Deo regnorum. Apparet regnum ceternum, regnum incorruptum. Do- 
mine Jesu Christe, Christiant sumus ; Tibi servimus ; Tu es spes nostra; Tu es 
spes Christianorum ; Deus sanctissime ; Deus altissime ; Deus omnipotens.’ 

Ὁ Ibid. p. 341: ‘ Advolabant truces manus jussis velocibus leviores, secre- 
taque pectoris, disruptis cutibus, visceribusque divulsis, nefandis adspectibus 
profanorum adnex4 crudelitate pandebant. Inter hec Martyris mens immo- 
bilis perstat: et licet membra rumpantur, divellantur viscera, latera dissi- 
pentur, animus tamen martyris integer, inconcussusque perdurat. Denique 
dignitatis suze memor Dativus, qui et Senator, tali voce preces Domino sub 
carnifice rabiente fundebat: O Christe Domine, non confundar.’ Ibid. p. 342: 
‘At martyr, inter vulnerum cruciatus sevissimos pristmam suam repetens 
orationem : Rogo, ait, Christe, non confundar.’ 

© Tbid. p. 342: ‘Spectabat interea Dativus lanienam corporis sui potius 
quam dolebat: et cujus ad Dominum mens animusque pendebat, nihil dol- 
orem corporis estimabat, sed tantum ad Dominum precabatur, dicens ; Sub- 
veni, rogo, Christe, habe. pietatem. Serva animam meam ; custodt spiritum 
mewm ut non confundar. Rogo, Christe, da sufferentiam.’ 

LECT. 


The M. artyrs pray to Fesus tn their agony. 401 


beheaded. I pray Thee, Christ, have mercy ; help me, Thou 
Son of God4d”’ ‘I pray Thee, O Christ: all praise to Thee. 
Deliver me, O Christ; I suffer in Thy Name. I suffer for a 
short while ; I suffer with a willing mind, O Christ my Lord : 
let me not be confounded®.’ 

Or listen to such an extract from an early document as the 
following :—‘ Calvisianus, interrupting Euplius, said, “ Let Eu- 
plius, who hath not in compliance with the edict of the emperors 
given up the sacred writings, but readeth them to the people, be 
put to the torture.” And while he was being racked, Euplius 
said, “I thank Thee, O Christ. Guard Thou me, who for Thee 
am suffering thus.” Calvisianus the consular said, “Cease, Eu- 
plius, from this folly. Adore the gods, and thou shalt be set 
at liberty.” Euplius said, “I adore Christ ; I utterly hate the 
demons. Do what thou wilt: I am a Christian. Long have 
I desired what now I suffer. Do what thou wilt. Add yet 
other tortures : I am a Christian.” After he had been tortured 
a long while, the executioners were bidden hold their hands. 
And Calvisianus said, “ Unhappy man, adore the gods. Pay 
worship to Mars, Apollo, and Adsculapius.” Euplius said, 
“1 worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. I adore 
the Holy Trinity, beside Whom there is no God. Perish the 
gods who did not make heaven and earth, and all that is in 
them. I am a Christian.” Calvisianus the prefect said, “ Offer 
sacrifice, if thou wouldest be set at liberty.” Euplius said, “I 
sacrifice myself only to Christ my God: more than this I can- 
not do. Thy efforts are to no purpose; I am a Christian.” 
Calvisianus gave orders that he should be tortured again more 
severely. And while he was being tortured, Euplius said, 
“Thanks to Thee, O Christ. Help me, O Christ. For Thee do 
I suffer thus, O Christ.” And he said this repeatedly. And as 
his strength gradually failed him, he went on repeating these 
or other exclamations, with his lips only—his voice was gone!” 


ἃ Acta, p. 342: ‘ Neinter moras torquentium exclusa anima corpus supplicio 
pendente desereret, tali voce Dominum presbyter precabatur : Rogo Christe, 
exaudi me. Gratias Tibi ago, Deus: jube me decollari. Rogo Christe, 
miserere. Dei Fili, subveni.’ 

e Ibid. p. 343: ‘Emeritus martyr ait: ..... Rogo, Christe, Tibi lau- 
des: libera me Christe, patior in Nomine Tuo. Breviter patior, libenter 
patior, Christe Domine ; non confundar.’ 

f Ruinart, p. 362; Acta S. Euplii Diaconi et Martyris, a. 304: ‘ Calvisi- 
anus interlocutus dixit: Huplius qui secundum Edictum Princitpum non 
tradidit Scripturas, sed legit populo, torqueatur. Cumque torqueretur, dixit 
ΠῚ Gratias Tibi Christe. Me custodi qui propter Te hee patior. 
vil pd 


402 Prayers of the martyrs not chance ‘ejaculations. 


You cannot, as I have already urged, dismiss from your con-— 
sideration such prayers as these, on the ground of their being 
‘mere ejaculations.’ Do serious men, who know they are dying, 
‘ejaculate’ at random? Is it at the hour of death that a man 
would naturally innovate upon the devotional habits of a life- 
time? Is it at such an hour that he would make hitherto un- 
attempted enterprises into the unseen world, and address himself 
to beings with whom he had not before deemed it lawful or 
possible to hold spiritual communion? Is not the reverse of 
this supposition notoriously the case? Surely, those of us who 
have witnessed the last hours of the servants of Christ cannot 
hesitate as to the answer. As the soul draws nigh to the gate 
of death, the solemnities of the eternal future are wont to cast 
their shadows upon the thought and heart ; and whatever is 
deepest, truest, most assured and precious, thenceforth engrosses 
every power. At that dread yet blessed hour, the soul clings 
with a new intensity and deliberation to the most certain truths, 
to the most prized and familiar words. The mental creations of 
an intellectual over-subtlety, or of a thoughtless enthusiasm, or 
of an unbridled imagination, or of a hidden perversity of will, 
or of an unsuspected unreality of character, fade away or are 
discarded. To gaze upon the naked truth is the one necessity; 
to plant the feet upon the Rock Itself, the supreme desire, in 
that awful, searching, sifting moment. Often, too, at a man’s 
last hour, will habit strangely assert its mysterious power of 
recovering, as if from the grave, thoughts and memories which 
seemed to have been lost for ever. Truths which have been 
half forgotten or quite forgotten since childhood, and prayers 
which were learned at a mother’s knee, return upon the soul 
with resistless persuasiveness and force, while the accumula- 
tions of later years disappear and are lost sight of. Depend 


Dixit Calvisianus Consularis: Desiste, Ewpli, ab insania hac. Deos adora 
et liberaberis. Euplius dixit: Adoro Christum, detestor demonia. Fac 
quod vis, Christianus sum. Hec diu optavi. Fac quod vis. Adde alia, 
Christianus sum. Postquam diu tortus esset, jussi sunt cessare carnifices. 
Et dixit Calvisianus: Miser, adora deos: Martem cole, Apollinem et discu- 
lapium. Dixit Euplius: Patrem et Filiuwm et Spiritum Sanctum adoro: 
Sanctam Trinitatem adoro, preter quam non est Deus. Pereant dui qui non 
fecerunt celum e terram, & que in eis sunt. Christianus sum. Calvisi- 
anus prefectus dixit: Sacrifica, si vis liberari. Euplius dixit: Sacrifico 
modo CHRISTO DEO me ipsum : quid ultra faciam, non habeo. Frustra 
conaris: Christianus sum. Calvisianus precepit iterum torqueri acrits. 
Cumque torqueretur, dixit Euplius: Gratias Tibi, Christe. Succurre Christe. 
Propter Te hac patior Christe. Et dixit sepius. Et deficientibus viribus, 
dicebat labiis tantum, absque voce hec vel alia.’ 
: [LECT. 


The Arian invocation of Chrast. 403 


upon it, the martyrs prayed to Jesus in their agony because they 
had prayed to Him long before, many of them from infancy ; 


_ because they knew from experience that such prayers were 


blessed and answered. They had been taught to pray to Him ; 
they had joined in prayers to Him ; they had been taunted and 
ridiculed for praying to Him ; they had persevered in praying 
to Him ; and when at last their hour of trial and of glory came, 
they had recourse to the prayers which they knew full well to be 
the secret of their strength, and those prayers carried them on 
through their agony, to the crown beyond it. 

And, further, you will have remarked that the worship of 
Jesus by the martyrs was full of the deepest elements of 
worship. It was made up of trust, of resignation, of self- 
surrender, of self-oblation. Nothing short of a belief in the 
absolute Godhead of Jesus could justify such worship. The 
Homoousion was its adequate justification. Certainly the Arians 
worshipped our Lord, although they rejected the Homoousion. 
So clear were the statements of Scripture, so strong and so 
universal was the tradition of Christendom, that Arianism could 
not resist the claims of a practice which was nevertheless at 
variance with its true drift and principle. For, as St. Atha- 
nasius pointed out, the Arians did in reality worship one whom 
they believed to be a being distinct from the Supreme God. 
The Arians were creature-worshippers not less than the heathené. 
Some later Arians appear to have attempted to retort the charge 
of creature-worship by pointing to the adoration of our Lord’s 
Humanity in the Catholic Church. But, as St. Athanasius 
explains, our Lord’s Manhood was adored, not as a distinct and 
individual Being, but only as inseparably joined to the ador- 
able Person of the Everlasting Word). To refuse to adore 
Christ’s Manhood was to.imply that after the incarnation men 
could truly conceive of It as separate from Christ’s Eternal 
Personi, There was no real analogy between this worship and 

5. St. Athanas. Epist. ad Adelphium, § 3: οὐ κτίσμα προσκυνοῦμεν, μὴ 
γένοιτο, ἐθνικῶν γὰρ καὶ ᾿Αρειανῶν ἣ τοιαύτη πλάνη" ἀλλὰ τὸν Κύριον τῆς κτί- 
TEws σαρκωθέντα τὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγον προσκυνοῦμεν. 

h Tbid.: εἰ γὰρ καὶ 7 σὰρξ αὐτὴ καθ᾽ ἑαυτὴν μέρος ἐστὶ τῶν κτισμάτων, ἀλλὰ 
Θεοῦ γέγονε σῶμα. καὶ οὔτε τὸ τοιοῦτον σῶμα καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸ διαιροῦντες ἀπὸ τυῦ 
Λόγου “προσκυνοῦμεν, οὔτε τὸν Λόγον προσκυνῆσαι θέλοντες μακρύνομεν. αὐτὸν 
ἀπὸ τῆς σαρκός" ἀλλ᾽ εἰδότες, καθὰ προείπομεν, τὸ “ ὃ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο." 
τοῦτον καὶ ἐν ᾿ σαρκὶ γενόμενον ἐπιγινώσκομεν Θεόν. 


i Ibid. : τίς τοιγαροῦν οὕτως ἄφρων ἐστὶν ὡς λέγειν τῷ Κυρίῳ, ἀπόστα ἀπὸ 
τοῦ σώματος ἵνα σε προσκυνήσω ; κιτ.λ. _Compare Ibid. § 5: ἵνα καὶ τολ- 


μῶσι λέγειν (sc. Ariani), ov προσκυνοῦμεν ἡμεῖς τὸν Κύριον μετὰ τῆς —— 


ἀλλὰ διαιροῦμεν τὸ σῶμα καὶ μόνῳ τούτῳ λατρεύομεν. 
vir | Dd2 


“4 


Us] .4 


}λ 


404 Early Socinian worship of Christ 


the Arian worship of a being who was in no wise associated 
with the Essence of God; and Arianism was either virtually 
ditheistic or consciously idolatrous. It was idolatrous, if Christ 
was a created being ; it was ditheistic, if, He was conceived of 
as really Divine, yet distinct in essence from the Essence of the 
Father. | 

The same phenomenon of the vital principle of a heresy being 
overridden for a while by the strength of the tradition of 
universal Christendom was reproduced, twelve centuries later, in 
the case of Socinianism. The earliest Socinians taught that the 
Son of God was a mere man, who was conceived of the Holy 
Ghost, and was therefore called the Son of God. But they also 


maintained that on account of His obedience, He was, after 


finishing His work of redemption, exalted to Divine dignity and 
honour! Christians were to treat Him as if He were God: 
they were to trust Him implicitly ; they were to adore Him™, 
Faustus Socinus® zealously insisted upon the duty of adoring 
Jesus Christ; and the Racovian Catechism expressly asserts 
that those who do not call upon or adore Christ are not to be 
accounted Christians®. But this was only the archeology, or at 


k St. Athanas. contr. Arian. Orat. ii. §14, sub fin. p. 482. Orat. iii. § 16,’ 


Ῥ. 565, εἰ yap μὴ οὕτως ἔχει, ἄλλ᾽ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐστὶ κτίσμα Kal ποίημα 6 
Adyos, ἢ οὐκ ἔστι Θεὸς ἀληθινὸς, διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἕνα τῶν κτισμάτων, ἢ εἰ 
Θεὸν αὐτὸν ὀνομάζουσιν ἐντρεπόμενοι παρὰ τῶν γραφῶν, ἀνάγκη λέγειν αὐτοὺς 
δύο θεοὺς, ἕνα μὲν κτίστην, τὸν δὲ ἕτερον κτιστὸν, καὶ δύο κυρίοις λατρεύειν, 
ἑνὶ μὲν ἀγενήτῳ, τῷ δὲ ἑτέρῳ γενητῷ καὶ κτίσματι. . « « . οὕτω δὲ φρονοῦντες 
πάντως καὶ πλείονας συνάψουσι θεούς" τοῦτο γὰρ τῶν ἐκπεσόντων ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς 
Θεοῦ τὸ ἐπιχείρημα. διατί οὖν οἱ ᾿Αρειανοὶ τοιαῦτα λογιζόμενοι. καὶ νοοῦντες 
ov συναριθμοῦσιν ἑαυτοὺς μετὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ; 

1 Socin. de Justif. Bibl. Fr, Pol. tom. i. fol. 601, col. 1. 

m Cat. Racov.:.‘ Qu. 236. Quid preterea Dominus Jesus huic precepto 
addidit? Resp. Id guod etiam Dominum Jesum pro Deo agnoscere tenemur, 
id est, pro eo, qui in nos potestatem habet divinam, et cui nos divinum exhibere 
honorem obstricti swmus. Qu. 237. In quo is honor divinus Christo debitus con- 
sistit? Resp. In eo, quod quemadmodum adoratione divina eum prosequi tene- 
mur, ita in omnibus necessitatibus nostris ejus opem implorare posswmus. 
Adoramus verd eum propter ipsius sublimem et divinam ejus potestatem.’ Cf. 
Mohler, Symbolik. Mainz. 1864, p. 609. ᾿ : 

n The tenacity of the Christian practice may be ‘still more remarkably 
illustrated from the death-cry of Servetus, as given in a MS. account of his 
execution, cited by Roscoe, Life of Leo X, c. 19. ‘Ipse horrenda voce cla- 
mans; Jesu, ΕἸ Dei eterni, miserere mei.’ 

ο Cat. Racov.; "Θὰ, 246. Quid verd sentis de tis hominibus, qui Christum non 
émpocant, nec adorandum eensent ? Resp. Prorsis non esse Christianos sentio, 
cum Christum non habeant. Et licet verbis id negare non audeant, reips& 
neganmttamen,’ In his sermon on ‘ Satan Transformed,’ South quotes Socinus 
as saying that ‘Preestat Trinitarium esse, quam asserere Christum non esse 
‘adorandum. 

[ LECT. 


—— αν ἄν Σθ τ" 


δος =o sha, ec 


abandoned, as vesting on antiquarian feeling. 405 


most the better feeling of Socinianism. Any such mere feeling 
was destined to yield surely and speedily to the logic of a strong 
destructive principle. In vain did Blandrata appeal to Faustus 
Socinus himselfP, when endeavouring to persuade the Socinians 
of Transylvania to adore Jesus Christ: the Transylvanians 
would not be persuaded to yield an act of adoration to any 
creature4?. In vain did the Socinian Catechism draw a dis- 
tinction between a higher and a lower worship, of which the 
former was reserved for the Father, while the latter was paid to 
Christ’. Practically this led on to a violation of the one 
positive fundamental principle of Socinianism ; it obscured the 
incommunicable prerogatives of the Supreme Being. Accord- 
ingly, in spite of the texts of Scripture upon which their 
worship of Christ was rested by the Socinian theologians, such 
worship was soon abandoned ; and the later practice of So- 
cinians has illustrated the true doctrinal force and meaning of 
that adoration which Socinianism refuses, but which the Church 
unceasingly offers to Jesus, the Son of God made Man. Of 
this worship the only real justification is that full belief in 
Christ’s Essential Unity with the Father which is expressed by 
the Homoousion. 

II. But the Homoousion did not merely justify and explain 
the devotional attitude of the Church towards Jesus Christ : it 
was, in reality, in keeping with the general drift and sense of 
her traditional language. 

‘Referénce has already been made to the prayers of the 


P See Socinus’ tractates, Bibl. Frat. Pol. ii. p. 709, sqq. 

q Cf. Mohler, Symbolik, p. 609 ; Bp. Pearson, Minor Works, vol. i. p. 300, 
and note. Coleridge’s Table Talk, 2nd ed. p. 304: ‘ Faustus Socinus wor- 
shipped Jesus Christ, and said that God had given Him the power of being 
omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged that mere audition 
or creaturely presence could not possibly justify worship from men ;—that 
a man, how glorified soever, was no nearer God than the most vulgar of the 
race. Prayer therefore was inapplicable. For himself Coleridge says (Ibid. 
Ῥ. 50), ‘In no proper sense of the term can I call Unitarians and Socinians 
believers in Christ; at least not in the only Christ of Whom I have read or 
know anything.’ 

* Cat. Rac.: ‘ Qu. 245. Ergo is honor et cultus ad ewm modum tribuitur, 
ut nullum sit inter Christum et Deum hoc in genere discrimen? Resp. Imo, 
permagnum est. Nam adoramus et colimus Deum, tanquam causam primam 
salutis nostre ; Christum tanquam causam secundam ; aut ut cum Paulo 
loquamur, Dewm tanquam Eum ex quo omnia, Christum ut eum per quem 
omnia.’ Cf. Bibl. Frat. Pol. tom. ii. fol. 466, qu. by Méhler, Symbolik, p. 609. 
Mohler observes that ‘ man sieht dass an Christus eine Art von Invocation 
gerichtet wird, die mit der Katholischen Anrufung der Heiligen einige 
Aehnlichkeit hat.’ 


VII | 


406 Lxplicet confessions of (ὦ hrist’s Divinity 


primitive martyrs; but the martyrs professed in terms their 
belief in Christ’s divinity, as frequently as they implied that 
belief by their adorations of Christ. This is the more observ- 
able because it is at variance with the suggestions by which 
those who do not share the faith of the martyrs, sometimes 
attempt to account for the moral spectacle which martyrdom 
presents. It has been said that the martyrs did not bear witness 
to any definite truth or dogma ; that the martyr-temper, so to 
term it, was composed of two elements, a kind of military en- 
thusiasm for an unseen Leader, and a strange unnatural desire 
to brave physical suffering ; that the prayers uttered by the 
martyrs were the product of this compound feeling, but that 
such prayers did not imply any defined conceptions respecting 
the rank and powers of Him to Whom they were addressed. 
Now, without denying that the martyrs were sustained by 
a strictly supernatural contempt for pain, or that their devotion 
to our Lord was of the nature of an intense personal attach- 
ment which could not brook the least semblance of slight or 
disloyalty, or that they had not analysed their intellectual appre- 
hension of the truth before them in the manner of the divines 
of the Nicene age, I nevertheless affirm that the martyrs did 
suffer on behalf of a doctrine which was dearer to them than 
life. The Christ with Whom they held such close and passionate 
communion, and for Whose honour they shed their blood, was 
not to them a vague floating idea, or a being of whose rank and 
powers they imagined themselves to be ignorant. If there be 
one doctrine of the faith which they especially confessed at 
death, it is the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity. This truth was 
not only confessed by bishops and presbyters. Philosophers, 
like Justin’; soldiers, such as Mauricet, and Tarachus", and 


5 Ruinart, Acta, p. 49: ‘Ego quidem ut homo imbecillis sum, et longé 
minor quam ut de infinita illius Deitate aliquid magnum dicere possim ; 
Prophetarwm munus hoc esse fateor.’ 

Ὁ Ibid. p. 243: ‘ Milites swmus, Imperator, tui: sed tamen servi, quod 
liberé confitemur, DIRE ἘΣ OES SO Habes hic nos confitentes Deum Patrem 
auctorem omnium ; et Filiwm Ejus Jesum Christum DEUM credimus.’ __ 

u Ibid. p. 377: Tépaxos εἶπεν" “Νῦν ἀληθῶς φρονιμώτερόν με ἐποίησας, ταῖς 
πληγαῖς ἐνδυναμώσας με, ἔτι μᾶλλον πεποιθέναι με ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ 
τοῦ Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ.᾽ Μάξιμος ἡγεμὼν εἶπεν" ‘ ᾿Ανοσιώτατε καὶ τρισκατάρατε, πῶς 
δυσὶ θεοῖς λατρεύεις, καὶ αὐτὸς ὁμολογῶν, τοὺς θεοὺς ἀρνῇ ; Tdpaxos elmer’ 
“Ἐγὼ Θεὸν ὁμολογῶ τὸν ὄντως ὄντα. Μάξιμος ἡγεμὼν εἶπεν" “ Καὶ μὴν καὶ 
Χριστόν τινα ἔφης εἶναι Θεόν. "Τάραχος εἶπεν" © Οὕτως ἔχει" αὐτὸς γάρ ἐστιν 
6 Χριστὸς 6 Ὑἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος, ἣ ἐλπὶς τῶν Χριστιανῶν, 5¢ ὃν καὶ. 
πάσχοντες σωζόμεθα.᾽ 

_[ LECT. 


by the primitive martyrs. 407 


Theodorus x; young men of personal beauty like Peter of Lamp- 
sacusy, or literary friends of high mental cultivation as were 
Epipodius and Alexander2; widows, such as Symphorosa® ; and 
poor women like Domnina?; and slaves such as Vitalis¢; and 
young boys such as Martialis¢ ;—the learned and the illiterate, 


x Ruinart, Acta, p. 425: ‘Vos autem erratis qui demonas fallaces et impos- 
tores Dei appellatione honoratis ; mihi vero Deus est Christus, Det Unigenitus 
Filius. Pro pietate igitur atque confessione Istius, et qui vulnerat incidat ; 
et qui verberat laceret ; et qui cremat fammam admoveat ; et qui his vocibus 
meis offenditur, linguam eximat.’ 

y Ibid. p. 135: ‘Comprehensus est quidam, Petrus nomine, valdé quidem 
fortis in fide ; pulcher animo et speciosus corpore. Proconsul dixit: Habes 
ante oculos decreta invictissemorum principum. Sacrifica ergo magne dee 
Venert. Petrus respondit: Miror, st persuades mihi, optime Proconsul, 
sacrificare tmpudice mulieri et sordide, que talia opera egit ut confusio sit 
CNANTOTE + 00+ 0 05 Oportet ergo me magis DEO vivo et vero, Regi seeculorum 
omnium Christo sacrificium offerre orationis deprecationis, convpunctionis et 
laudis. Audiens hec Proconsul jussit eum adhuc etate adolescentulum tendi 
in rota, et inter ligna in circuitu posita, vinculis ferreis totum corpus ejus 
fecit constringi: ut contortus et confractus [?] minutatim ossa ejus commi- 
nuerentur. Quanto autem plus torquebatur famulus Dei, tanto magis fortior 
apparebat. Constans vero aspectu, et ridens de ejus stultitia, conspiciens in 
colum ait: Z%bi ago gratias, Domine Jesu Christe, qui mihi hance toleran- 
tiam dare dignatus es ad vincendum nequissimum tyrannum. Tunc Pro- 
consul videns tantam ejus perseverantiam, et nec his quidem defecisse 
tormentis, jussit eum gladio percuti.’ 

2 Acta, p. 65, circ. a. 178: ‘Ita literis eruditissimi, concordia crescente, 
adeo provecti sunt: ...... ad hec beatus Epipodius..... - Sempt- 
ternum vero Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum quem crucifixum memoras, 
resurreaisse non nosti, qui ineffabili mysterio homo pariter et Deus, famulis 
suis tramitem immortalitatis instituit, ...... Christum cum Patri ac 
Spiritu Sancto Deum esse confiteor, dignumque est ut illi animam meam 
refundam, qui mtht et Creator est et Redemptor.’ 

® [bid. p. 21, a. 120: ‘St pro nomine Christi Det mei incensa fuero, illos 
demones tuos magis exuro.’ 

> Ibid. p. 235: ‘ Ne in ignem eternam incidam, et tormenta perpetua, 
Deum colo οἰ Christum ejus, qui fecit celum et terram, 

© Ibid. p. 410 (cf. St. Ambr. de Exh. Virgin. ὁ. 1), cire. a. 304: ‘Martyri 
nomen Agricola est, cui Vitalis servus fuit ante, nunc consors et collega mar- 
tyrii. Preecessit servus, ut provideret locum ; secutus est dominus..... 


_ cumque sanctus Vitalis cogeretur a persequentibus ut Christum negaret, et 


ille ampliis profiteretur Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, omnia torment- 
orum genera in eum exercentes, ut non esset in corpore ejus sine vulnere 
locus, orationem fudit ad Dominum dicens ; Domine Jesu Christe, Salvator 
meus, et Deus meus; jube suscipit spiritum meum; quia jam desidero ut 
accipiam coronam, quam angelus tuus sanctus mihi ostendit. Et completa 
oratione emisit spiritum.’ 

ἃ Tbid., Passio S. Felicitatis et Septem Filiorum Ejus, p. 23: ‘Hoe quoque 
amoto, jussit septimum Martialem ingredi, eique dixit: Crudelitatis vestrze 
factores effecti, Augustorum instituta contemnitis, et in vestra pernicie per- 
wk Respondit Martialis: O st nosses que pene idolorum cultoribus 
VII 


408 Explicit confessions of Christ's Divinity 


the young and the old, the noble and the lowly, the slave and 
his master, united in this confession. Sometimes it is wrung 
from the martyr reluctantly by cross-examination ; sometimes it 
is proclaimed as a truth with which the Christian heart is full 
to bursting, and which, out of the heart’s abundance, the Chris- 
tian mouth cannot but speak. Sometimes Christ’s Divinity is 
professed as belonging to the great Christian contradiction of 
the polytheism of the heathen world around ; sometimes it is 
explained as involving Christ’s Unity with the Father, against 
the pagan imputation of ditheism® ; sometimes it is proclaimed 
as justifying the worship which, as the heathens knew, Chris- 
tians paid to Christ. The martyrs look paganism in the face, 
and maintain that, although Christ was crucified, yet nevertheless 
Christ is God ; that even while His very Name is cast out as 
evil, Christ is really Master of the fortunes of Rome and Dis- 
poser of the events of history ; that the pagan empire itself 
did but unwittingly subserve His purposes and prepare His 
triumphf; that He Who is the Creator of heaven and earth, 


parate sunt! Sed adhuc differt Deus tram suam in vos et idola vestra demon- 
strare. Omnes enim qui non confitentur CHRISTUM VERUM esse DEUM in 
ignem ceternum mittentur.’ 

e Ruinart, Acta, p. 122: ‘ Post hec cum adstante haud procul Asclepiade, 
quis diceretur inquireret [Polemon scilicet] respondit Asclepiades, Christianus. 
Polemon: Cujus ecclesize? Asclepiades: Catholice. Polemon: Quem 
Deum colis? Respondit: Christum. Polemon: Quid ergo? iste alter 
est? Respondit: Non, sed ipse quem et tpst paullo ante confesst sunt.’ 

Cf, Prudentius, Peristeph. Hymn. 10. 671 :— 


‘ Arrisit infans, nec moratus retulit : 
Est quidquid illud, quod ferunt homines Deum 
Unum esse oportet, et quod uni est unicum. 
Cum Christus hoe sit, Christus est verus Deus, 
Genera deorum multa nec pueri putant.’ 


f Prudentius has given a poetical amplification of the last prayer of 
St. Laurence, which, whatever its historic value, at any rate may be taken to 
represent the primitive Christian sentiment respecting the relation of Jesus 
Christ to the pagan empire. It should be noticed that neither St. Ambrose 
nor St. Augustine, in their accounts of the martyrdom, report anything of 
this kind; Prudentius may have followed a distinct and trustworthy tradition. 
The martyr is interceding for Rome :— 


“Ὁ Christe, numen unicum, 
O splendor, O virtus Patris, 
O factor orbis et poli, 
Atque auctor horum meoenium! 


Qui sceptra Rome in vertice 
Rerum locasti, sanciens 
Mundum Quirinali togze 
Servire, et armis cedere 
[LEcT. 


ΞΡ ΩΡ ῳ ee ee ae “ΠΤ 


<a 


Oe ΣῊ ee OP eS ee 


"Geko ee eee συ χ οο κί υς; 


by the primitive martyrs. 409 


can afford to wait, and is certain of the future. This was the 


faith which made any compromise with paganism impossibles. 
‘What God dost thou worship?’ enquired the judges of the 
Christian Pionius. ‘I worship,’ replied Pionius, ‘Him Who 
made the heavens, and Who beautified them with stars, and 
Who has enriched the earth with flowers and trees.’ ‘ Dost 
thou mean,’ asked the magistrates, ‘Him Who was crucified ?’ 
‘Certainly,’ replied Pionius ; ‘Him Whom the Father sent for 
the salvation of the world.’ 

The point before us notoriously admits of the most copious 
illustrationi: and it is impossible to mistake its significance. 


Ut discrepantum gentium 
Mores, et observantiam, 
Linguasque et ingenia et sacra 
Unis domares legibus. 


En omne sub regnum Remi 
Mortale concessit genus : 
Idem loquuntur dissoni 
Ritus, id ipsum sanciunt. 


Hoc destinatum quo magis 
Jus Christiani nominis, 
Quodcumque terrarum jacet 
Uno illigaret vinculo. 


Da, Christe, Romanis tuis 
Sit Christiana ut civitas : 
Per quem dedisti, ut ceeteris 
Mens una sacrorum foret.’ 
Peristeph. 2, 413. 


& Prud. Peristeph. Hymn. 5.57; qu. by Ruinart, Acta, p. 330. De S. Vin- 
centii martyrio :— 
‘Vox nostra que sit accipe. 
Est Christus et Pater Deus: 
Servi hujus ac testes sumus ; 
Extorque si potes fidem. 


Tormenta, carcer, ungulze 
Stridensque flammis lamina 
Atque ipsa poenarum ultima; 
Mors Christianis ludus est.’ 


h Ruinart, p. 125: ‘Judices interim dixerunt: Quem Deum colitis? 
Pionius respondit: Hune qui celum fecit, et sideribus ornavit, qui terram 
statuit, et floribus arboribusque decoravit ; qui ordinavit circumflua terre et 
maria, et statuta terminorum vel litorum lege signavit. Tumilli: Lllum 
dicts qui crucifixus est? Et Pionius: Illwm dico quem pro salute orbis Pater | 
misit.’ 

i Tbid., Acta Sincera, p. 210, for the confession of Sapricius, who after- 
wards fell; p. 235; p. 256 for that of Victor at Marseilles; pp. 274, 314, 
ae 438, 439, 497, 470, 479, 483, 506, 513, 514, 521. 

Vil 


410 Did the ‘higher minds accept the faith of the people? 


If the dying words of this or that martyr are misreported, or 
exaggerated, or coloured by the phraseology of a later, age, the 
general phenomenon cannot but be admitted, as a fact beyond 
dispute. The martyrs of the primitive Church died, in a great 
number of cases, expressly for the dogma of Christ’s Divinity. 
The confessions of the martyrs explain and justify the prayers 
of the martyrs; the Homoousion combines, summarizes, fixes 
the sense of their confessions. The martyrs did not pray to or 
confess a creature external to the Essence of God, however 
dignified, however powerful, however august. They prayed to 
Christ as God, they confessed that Christ is God, they died for 
Christ as God. They prayed to Him and they spoke of Him as 
of a distinct Person, Who yet was one with God. Does not this 
simple faith of the Christian people cover the same area as the 
more clearly defined faith of the Nicene fathers? Or could it be 
more fairly or more accurately summarized by any other symbol 
than it is by the Homoousion ? 

But you admit that the Nicene decision did very fairly embody 
and fix in a symbolical form the popular creed of earlier cen- 
turies. ‘This,’ you say, ‘is the very pith of our objection ; it 
was the popular creed to which the Council gave the sanction of 
its authority.’ You suggest that although a dying martyr may 
be an interesting ethical study, yet that the moral force which 
carries him through his sufferings is itself apt to be a form of 
fanaticism hostile to any severely intellectual conception of the 
worth and bearings of his creed. You admit that the martyr 
represents the popular creed; but then you draw a distinction 
between a popular creed, as such, and the ‘ideas’ of the ‘thinkers.’ 
‘What is any and every creed of the people,’ say you, ‘but the 
child of the wants and yearnings of humanity, fed at the breast 
of mere heated feeling, and nursed in the lap of an ignorance 
more or less profound?’ A popular creed, you admit, may have 
a restricted interest, as affording an insight into the intellectual 
condition of the people which holds it; but you deem it worth- 
less as a guide to absolute truth. The question, you maintain, 
is not, What was believed by the primitive Christians at large? 
The question is, What was taught by the well-instructed teachers 
of the early Church? Did the creed of the people, with all its 
impulsiveness and rhetoric, keep within the lines of the grave, 
reserved, measured, hesitating, cautious language of the higher 
minds of primitive Christendom ? | 

Now here, my brethren, I might fairly take exception to your 
distinction between a popular and an educated creed, as : fact 

LECT, 


Christ's Divinity taught by sub-apostolc Fathers. 411 


inapplicable to the genius and circumstances of early Christianity. 
Are not your criteria really derived from your conceptions of 
modern societies, political and religious? It was once said of an 
ancient state, that each of its citizens was so identified with the 
corporate. spirit and political action of his country, as to be in 
fact a statesman. And in the primitive Church, it was at least 
approximately true that every Christian, through the intensity 
and intelligence of the popular faith, was a sound divine. Men 
did not then die for rhetorical phrases, any more than they 
would do so now; and if the martyrs were, as a rule, men of the 
people, it is also notorious that not a few among them were 
bishops and theologians of repute. But that we may do justice 
to the objection, let us enquire briefly what the great Church 
teachers of the first three centuries have taught respecting the 
Higher and Eternal Nature of Jesus Christ. 

And here let us remark, first of all, that a chain of representa- 
tive writers, reaching from the sub-apostolic to the Nicene age, 
does assert, in strong and explicit language, the belief of the 
Church that Jesus Christ is God. 

Thus St. Ignatius of Antioch dwells upon our Lord’s Divine 
Nature as a possession of the Church, and of individual Chris- 
tians ; he calls Jesus Christ ‘my God,’ ‘our God.’ ‘Jesus Christ 
our God,’ he says, ‘was carried in the womb of Mary*,” The 
Blood of Jesus is the Blood of God}, Ignatius desires to 
imitate the sufferings of his God™. The sub-apostolic author of 
the Letter to Diognetus teaches that ‘the Father hath sent to 
men, not one of His servants, whether man or angel, but the 
very Architect and Author of all things, by Whom all has been 
ordered and settled, and on Whom all depends. ... He has sent 
Him as being God».’ And because He is God, His Advent is 
a real revelation of God ; He has shewn Himself to men, and 
by faith men have seen and known their God. St. Polycarp 


k Ad Eph. 18: 6 γὰρ Θεὸς ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς ὃ Χριστὸς ἐκυοφορήθη ὑπὸ Μαρίας, 
Cf. Ibid. 7: ἐν σαρκὶ γενόμενος Θεός. 

1 Eph. 1: ἀναζωπυρήσαντες ἐν αἵματι τοῦ Θεοῦ. 

m Rom. 6: ἐπιτρέψατέ μοι μιμητὴν εἶναι τοῦ πάθους τοῦ Θεοῦ μου. 

n Ep. δὰ Diogn. 7: αὐτὸς 6 παντοκράτωρ καὶ παντοκτίστης καὶ ἀόρατος 
@cds..... ov καθάπερ ἄν τις εἰκάσειεν, ἀνθρώποις ὑπηρέτην τινὰ πέμψας ἢ 
ἄγγελον, ἢ ἄρχοντα, ἢ τινὰ τῶν διεπόντων τὰ ἐπίγεια, ἢ τινὰ τῶν πεπιστευμένων 
τὰς ἐν οὐρανοῖς διοικήσεις, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸν τὸν τεχνίτην καὶ δημιουργὸν τῶν ὅλων 
+++. ὡς Θεὸν ἔπεμψεν, ὡς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἔπεμψεν, ὧς σώζων ἔπεμψεν. 

ο Ep. ad Diogn. c. 8: τίς γὰρ ὅλως ἀνθρώπων ἠπίστατο τί ποτ᾽ ἐστὶ Θεὸς, 
πρὶν αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν... ἀνθρώπων δὲ οὐδεὶς οὔτε εἶδεν οὔτε ἐγνώρισεν, αὐτὸς δὲ 
mi ἐπέδειξεν, ἐπέδειξε δὲ διὰ πίστεως, ἢ μόνῃ Θεὸν ἰδεῖν συγκεχώρηται. 
VII 


+ 


412 Christ's Deity how taught by ‘fathers of 


appeals to Him as to the Everlasting Son of God P ; all things on 
earth and in heaven, all spirits obey Him4; He is the Author 
of our justification; He is the Object of our hopet. Justin 
Martyr maintains that the Word is the First-born of God, and so 
Gods; that He appeared in the Old Testament as the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacobt; that He is sometimes called the 
Glory of the Lord, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Wisdom, 
sometimes the Angel, sometimes God*. St. Justin argues 
against Tryphon that if the Jews had attentively considered what 
the prophets have written, they would not have denied that | 
Christ is God, and the Only Son of the Unbegotten God *. He 
maintains that the Word is Himself the witness to His own 
Divine Generation of the Fathery; and that the reality of His 
Sonship is itself a sufficient evidence of His True Divinity% — 
Tatian is aware that the Greeks deem the faith of the Church 
utter folly ; but he nevertheless will assert that God has ap- 
peared on earth in a human form®. Athenagoras proclaims 
with special emphasis the oneness of the Word with the Father, 
as Creator and Ruler of the universe». Melito of Sardis speaks 
of Jesus as being both God and Man°¢: ‘Christians,’ he says, 
‘do not worship senseless stones, as do the heathen, but God and 


P Epist. Eccl. Smyrn. de Mart. 8. Polyc. n. 14. 

a Ad Phil. 2: ὯΩι ὑπετάγη τὰ πάντα ἐπουράνια kal ἐπίγεια' ᾧ πᾶσα πνοὴ 
λατρεύει. In Phil. 6: τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ Θεοῦ apparently refers to Christ. 

r Ibid. 8: ἀδιαλείπτως οὖν προσκαρτερῶμεν τῇ ἐλπίδι ἡμῶν καὶ τῷ ἀῤῥαβῶνι 
τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἡμῶν, ὅς ἐστι Χριστὸς ᾿Ιησοῦς. 

® Apol. i. n. 63: ὃς Λόγος καὶ πρωτότοκος ὧν τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ Θεὸς ὑπάρχει. 

t Ibid. 

u See the argument of the whole passage, Contr. Tryph. 57-61: ἀρχὴν mpd 
πάντων τῶν κτισμάτων ὃ Θεὸς γεγέννηκε δύναμίν τινα ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ λογικὴν, ἥτις 
καὶ δόξα Κυρίου ὑπὸ τοῦ Πνεύματος τοῦ ᾿Αγίου καλεῖται, ποτὲ δὲ Ὑἱὸς, ποτὲ δὲ 
Σοφία, ποτὲ δὲ ΓΑγγελος, ποτὲ δὲ Θεός. 

x [bid. 126: ef νενοήκατε τὰ εἰρημένα ὑπὸ τῶν προφητῶν, οὐκ ἂν ἐξηρνεῖσθε 
᾿ αὐτὸν εἶναι Θεὸν τοῦ μόνου καὶ ἀγεννήτου Θεοῦ Tidy. Cf. Ibid. 63: προσκυνη- 
τός---καὶ Θεός. Justin expresses the truth of our Lord’s distinct Personality 
by the phrase Θεὸς ἕτερος ἀριθμῷ ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γνώμῃ (Ibid. 56). 

Υ Ibid. 61: μαρτυρήσει δέ μοι ὃ Λόγος τῆς σοφίας αὐτὸς ὧν οὗτος 6 Θεὸς 
ἀπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων γεννηθείς. 

z Ibid. 126; Apolog. i. 63. 

a Ady. Gree. c. 21 : οὐ yap μωραίνομεν, ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες, οὐδὲ λήρους ἄπαγ- 
γέλλομεν, Θεὸν ἐν ἀνθρώπου μορφῇ γεγονέναι. Cf. Ibid. π. 13; τοῦ πεπόν- 
θοτος Θεοῦ. 

b Legat. n. 10: πρὸς αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ δι᾽ αὐτοῦ πάντα ἐγένετο, ἑνὸς ὄντος τοῦ 
Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ. cart 

¢ See Eus. Hist. Eccl. vy. 28. Compare the magnificent passage from St. 
Melito’s treatise on Faith, given in Cureton’s Spicilegium Syriacum, pp. 53, 
54, and quoted by Westcott on the Canon, p. 196. 


a aS ee ee, ee οπινν πἰ 


[ LECT. 


the second and third centurces. 413 


His Christ, Who is God the Word4’ δύ, Irenzeus perhaps re- 
presents the purest and deepest stream of apostolic doctrine 
which flowed from St. John through Polycarp into the Western 
Church. St. Irenzus speaks of Christ as sharing the Name of 
the only true God. He maintains against the Valentinians that 
the Divine Name in its strictest sense was not given to any 
angel; and that when in Scripture the Name of God is given to 
any other than God Himself there is always some explanatory 
epithet or clause in order to shew that the full sense of the word 
is not intended®. None is directly called God save God the 
Father of all things and His Son Jesus Christ. In both Testa- 
ments Christ is preached as God and Lord, as the King Eternal, 
as the Only-begotten, as the Word Incarnate’. If Christ is 
worshipped 4, if Christ forgives sinsi, if Christ is Mediator be- 
tween God and mank, this is because He is really a Divine 
Person. 

And if from Gaul we pass to Africa, and from the second to 
the third century, the force and number of primitive testimonies 
to the Divinity of our Lord increase upon us so rapidly as to 
render it impossible that we should do more than glance at a 
few of the more prominent. At Alexandria we find Clement 
speaking of That Living God Who suffered and Who is adored!; 
of the Word, Who is both God and man, and the Author of all 
blessings ™ ; of God the Saviour™, Who saves us, as being the 


ἃ Apol. apud Auct. Chron. Pasch. (Gall. tom. i. p. 678): οὐκ ἐσμὲν λίθων 
οὐδεμίαν αἴσθησιν ἐχόντων θεραπευταὶ, ἀλλὰ μόνου Θεοῦ Tov πρὸ πάντων Kal 
ἐπὶ πάντων, καὶ ἔτι τοῦ Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ ὄντος Θεοῦ Λόγου πρὸ αἰώνων ἐσμὲν 
θρησκευταί. Routh, Rel. Sacr. i. 118, 133. 

¢ Adv. Her. iii. 6, n. 3. 

f Ibid. iii. 6, π. 2: ‘Nemo igitur alius Deus nominatur, aut Dominus 
appellatur nisi qui est omnium Deus et Dominus, qui et Moysi dixit, Ego 
ΕΝ Qui 501, ..... . οὐ Hujus Filius Jesus Christus.’ ΟΣ iii. 8, n. 3: ‘ Deus 

lus.’ ἢ 

& Ibid. iii. 19, n. 2: ‘Quoniam autem Ipse proprié preter omnes qui 
fuerunt tunc homines, Deus, et Dominus, et Rex AXternus et Unigenitus, et 
Verbum Incarnatum predicatur, et a prophetis omnibus et apostolis, et ab 
ipso Spiritu, adest videre omnibus qui vel modicum veritatis attigerint.’ 

h Thid. iii.9, 2. ‘Thus [obtulerunt magi] quoniam Deus.’ 

i Tbid. v. 17, ἢ: 3. k Ibid. iii. 18, 7. 

1 Protrept. το: πίστευσον, ἄνθρωπε, ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ Θεῷ, τῷ παθόντι καὶ προσ- 
κυνουμένῳ Θεῷ ζῶντι. 

m [bid. i.: αὐτὸς οὗτος 6 Λόγος, ὃ μόνος ἄμφω, Θεός τε καὶ ἄνθρωπος, 
ἁπάντων ἡμῖν αἴτιος ἀγαθῶν. 

Ὁ Strom. ii. 9: Θεῷ τῷ Σωτῆρι; Ibid. v. 6: 6 Θεὸς Σωτὴρ κεκλημένος, 7 
τῶν ὅλων ἀρχὴ, ἥτις ἀπεικόνισται μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου πρώτη καὶ πρὸ 
νον τετύπωκεν δὲ τὰ μέθ᾽ ἑαυτὴν ἅπαντα γενόμενα. 

VII 


414 Christ's Deity taught by Origen, 


Author and Archetype of all existing beings. Clement alludes 
to our Lord’s Divinity as explaining His equality with the 
Father °, His prescience during His Human LifeP, His revela- 
tion of the Father to men4. Origen maintains Christ’s true 
Divinity against the contemptuous criticisms of Celsus?. Origen 
more than once uses the expression ‘the God Jesus’.’ He 
teaches that the Word, the Image of God, is Godt; that the 
Son is as truly Almighty as the Father"; that Christ is the 
Very Word, the Absolute Wisdom, the Absolute Truth, the 
Absolute Righteousness Itself*. Christ, according to Origen, 
possesses all the attributes of Deityy ; God is contemplated in 
the contemplation of Christ% Christ’s Incarnation is like the 
economical language of parables which describe Almighty God 
as if He were a human being. So real is Christ’s Deity, that 
His assumption of our Nature, like the speech of a parable, is 
to be looked upon as only a condescension to finite intelligences®. 
There is no Highest Good in existence which is superior to 
Christ » ; as Very God, Christ is present in all the world; He 
is present with every man® Origen continually closes his 


© Protrept. 10: 6 φανερώτατος ὄντως Ocds, ὃ τῷ Δεσπότῃ τῶν ὅλων ἐξισωθείς. 

P Quis Div. Salv. 6: προεῖδε ds Θεὸς, ἃ μέλλει διερωτηθήσεσθαι. 

ᾳ Ped.i. 8. We know God from our knowledge of Jesus—é« τρυτάνης 
ἰσοσθενοῦς. 

® Contr. Cels. ii. 9, 16 sqq. ; vii. 53, &c. 

8 Θεὸν Ἰησυῦν, Ibid. v. 51; vi. 66. t Select. in Gen. In Gen. ix. 6. 

ἃ Princ. 1. ii. n. τος: ‘Ut autem unam eandemque Omnipotentiam Patris 
et Filii esse cognoscas, sicut unus atque idem est cum Patre Deus et Domi- 
nus, audi hoc modo Johannem in Apocalypsi dicentem: Heee dixit Dominus 
Deus, qui est et qui erat, et qui venturus est, Omnipotens ; qui enim ven- 
turus est, quis est alius nisi Christus.’ 

x Contr. Cels. iii. 41: αὐτόλογος, abtocopla, αὐτοαλήθεια. Ibid. v. 39: 
αὑτοδικαιοσύνη». 

y In Jerem. Hom. viii. n. 2: πάντα γὰρ ὅσα τοῦ Θεοῦ, τοιαῦτα ἐν αὐτῷ 
ἔστι, ὁ Χριστός ἐστι σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ... αὐτὸς ἀπολύτρωσις, αὐτὸς φρύνησίς ἐστι 
Θεοῦ. 

2 In Joan. t. xxxii. n. 18: θεωρεῖται γὰρ ἐν τᾷ Λόγῳ, ὄντι Θεᾷ καὶ εἰκόνι 
τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀοράτου. 

a In Matt. t. xvii. n. 20: ὥσπερ ὃ Θεὸς ἀνθρώπους οἰκονομῶν ὡς ἐν παρα- 
βολαῖς ἄνθρωπος λέγεται, τάχα δέ ws καὶ γίνεται" οὕτως καὶ ὃ Σωτὴρ προηγου- 
μένως Ὑἱὸς dv τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Θεός ἐστιν, καὶ Ὑἱὸς τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ, καὶ εἰκὼν 
τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου" οὐ μένει δὲ ἐν ᾧ ἐστι προηγουμένως, ἀλλὰ γίνεται κατ᾽ 
οἰκονομίαν τοῦ ἐν παραβολαῖς λεγομένου ἀνθρώπου ὄντως δὲ Θεοῦ, Tids ἀνθρώπου 
κατὰ τὸ μιμεῖσθαι, ὅταν ἀνθρώπους οἰκονομῇ, τὸν Θεὸν λεγόμενον ἐν παραβολαῖς 
καὶ γινόμενον ἄνθρωπον. 

> Τῇ Joan. t. i. ἢ. 1τ: οὐ σιωπητέον. .. τὸν μετὰ τὸν Πατέρα τῶν ὅλων 
Θεὸν Λόγον, οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἔλαττον ἀγαθοῦ καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἀγαθόν. : ᾿ 

e Ibid. t. vi. n. 15: δοξολογίαν περὶ τῆς προηγουμένης οὐσίας mia διη- 

LECT, 


Tertulhan, St. Cyprian and others. 415 


Homilies with a doxology to our Lord ; and he can only account 
for refusal to believe in His Divinity by the hypothesis of some 
kind of mental obliquity4 Tertullian’s language is full of 
Punic fire, but in speaking of Christ’s Divinity he is dealing 
with opponents who would force him to be accurate, even if 
there were not a higher motive for accuracy. Tertullian antici- 
pates the Homoousion in terms: Christ, he says, is called God, 
by reason of His oneness of substance with God®*. Christ alone 
is begotten of God’; He is God and Lord over all mens. Ter- 
tullian argues at length that an Incarnation of God is possible»; 
he dwells upon its consequences in language which must appear 
paradoxical to unbelief or half-belief, but which is natural to a 
sincere and intelligent faith in its reality. Tertullian speaks of 
a Crucified Godi; of the Blood of God, as the price of our re- 
demption Κ, Christians, he says, believe in a God Who was dead, 
and Who nevertheless reigns for ever. St. Cyprian argues 
that those who believe in Christ’s power to make a temple of 
.the human soul must needs believe in His Divinity ; nothing 
but utter blindness or wickedness can account for a refusal to 
admit this truth™, St. Hippolytus had urged it against Jews 
and Sabellians"; Arnobius determines to indent it upon the 


γεῖται, ὅτι δύναμιν τοσαύτην ἔχει, ds καὶ ἀόρατος εἶναι τῇ θειότητι αὐτοῦ, 
παρὼν παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ, παντὶ δὲ καὶ τῷ ὅλῳ κόσμῳ συμπαρεκτεινόμενο. 

4 Contr. Cels. iii. 29. 

© Apol. 6. 21: ‘Hunc ex Deo prolatum didicimus, et prolatione genera- 
tum, et idcirco Filium Dei, et Deum dictum unitate substantic.’ Ibid.: 
‘Quod de Deo profectum est, Deus est, et Dei Filius, et Unus ambo.” Adv. 
Prax. 4: “ Filium non aliunde deduco, sed de substantia Patris.’ Ibid. 3: 
* Consortibus [Filio et Spiritu Sancto] substantie Patris.’ 

τ Adv. Prax. 7: ‘Solus ex Deo genitus.’ 

& Adv. Jud. 7: ‘Christus omnibus Deus et Dominus est,’ Cf. c. 12. 

h Cf. De Carne Christi, c. 3, 4. 

i Adv. Marc. ii. 27: ‘ Deum crucifixum.’ 

k Ad Uxor. ii. 3: ‘Non sumus nostri, sed pretio empti, et quali pretio? 
Sanguine Dei.’ 

1 Adv. Mare. ii. 16: ‘Christianorum est etiam Deum mortuum credere, et 
tamen viventem in evo evorum.’ 

m Ep. 73, ad Jubaianum, 12: ‘Si peccatorum remissam consecutus est... 
et templum Dei factum est, quero cujus Dei? Si Creatoris, non potuit in 
eum qui non credidit. Si Christi, nec ejus fieri potest templum qui negat 
Deum Christum.’ Cf. Ep. 74, c. 6: ‘Que verd est anime cecitas, que 
pravitas, fide unitatem de Deo Patre, et de Jesu Christi Domini et Dei 
nostri traditione venientem nolle agnoscere,’ &c. 

n Adv. Jud. c. 6: Θεὸς ὧν ἀληθινῶς. Contr. Noet. c. 6: οὗτος ὃ ὧν ἐπὶ 
πάντων Θεός ἐστιν" λέγει γὰρ οὕτω μετὰ παῤῥησίας" Πάντα μοι παραδέδοται 
ὑπὸ i” Πατρός. “ὃ ὧν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς eddAoynTds,’ γεγένηται, καὶ ἄνθρωπος 
VII 


416 Various tndirect testimontes of the third century. 


pagan mind by dint of constant repetition®. Theonas of Alex- 
andria instructs a candidate for the imperial librarianship how 
he may gradually teach it to his pagan master?. Dionysius 
of Alexandria vehemently repudiates as a cruel scandal the 
report of his having denied ita. St. Peter of Alexandria would 
prove it from an examination of Christ’s miracles". For the 
rest, St. Methodius of Tyre may represent the faith of western 
Asia®; the martyred Felix that of the Roman chairt; and, 
to omit other illustrations, the letter of the council to Paulus 
of Samosata summarizes the belief both of eastern and western 
Christendom during the latter half of the third century*. 
This language of the preceding centuries does in effect and 
substance anticipate the Nicene decision. When once the 
question of Christ’s Divinity had been raised in the metaphysical 
form which the Homoousion presupposes, no other answer was 
possible, unless the Nicene fathers had been prepared to renounce 


γενόμενος, Θεός ἐστιν eis τοὺς αἰῶνας. Apud Routh, Opuse. i. p. 59. And 
Cc. 17: Θεὸς Λόγος an’ οὐρανῶν κατῆλθεν εἰς τὴν ἁγίαν παρθένον. Adv. 
Beron. et Helic. ἢ. 2: γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος ὃ τῶν ὅλων Θεός. So in Eus. v. 28, 
He is called our εὔσπλαγχνος Θεός. 

° Adv. Gent. ii. 60: ‘Ideo Christus, licet vobis invitis, Deus ; Deus 
inquam Christus—hoc enim spe dicendum est, ut infidelium dissiliat et 
disrumpatur auditus—Dei principis jussione loquens sub hominis forma.’ 
Ibid. i. 53: ‘ Deus ille sublimis fuit ; Deus radice ab intima, Deus ab incog- 
nitis regnis, et ab omnium principe Deus sospitator est missus.’ 

P Apud Routh, Rel. Sacr. iii. p. 443; Ep. ad Lucian. Cubicul. Prepos. c. 
7: ‘Interdum et divinas scripturas laudare conabitur..... laudabitur et 


interim Evangelium Apostolusque pro divinis oraculis: insurgere poterit © 


Christi mentio, explicabitur paullatim ejus sola Divinitas.’ 

a Ep. ad Dionys. Romsapud 85. Athan. Op. tom. i. p. 255: καὶ δ ἄλλης 
ἐπιστολῆς ἔγραψα, ἐν ois ἤλεγξα καὶ ὃ προφέρουσιν ἔγκλημα Kat’ ἐμοῦ, ψεῦδος 
ὃν, ὧς od λέγοντος τὸν Χριστὸν ὁμοούσιον εἶναι τῷ Θεῷ. 

τ Apud Routh, Rel. Sac. iv. 48: τὰ δὲ σημεῖα πάντα & ἐποίησε καὶ αἱ 
δυνάμεις δεικνῦσιν αὐτὸν Θεὸν εἶναι ἐνανθρωπήσαντα. τὰ συναμφότερα τοίνυν 
δείκνυται" ὅτι Θεὸς ἦν φύσει, καὶ γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος φύσει. 

® De Symeon. et Αππᾷ, n. 6: Σὺ Θεὸς πρῶτος, ἔμπροσθέν σου οὐκ ἐγεννήθη 
θεὸς ἄλλος ἐκ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς, καὶ μετὰ σοῦ οὐκ ἔσται ἄλλος Ὑἱὸς τᾷ Πατρὶ 
ὁμοούσιος καὶ ὁμότιμος. n. 8: διὰ τοῦ μονογενοῦς καὶ ἀπαραλλάκτου καὶ 
ὁμοουσίου Παιδός σου τὴν λύτρωσιν ἡμῖν ποιησάμενος. τι. 14: φῶς ἀληθινὸν ἐκ 
φωτὸς ἀληθινοῦ, Θεὸς ἀληθινὸς ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, Quoted by Klee. 

t Ep. δὰ Maximin. Epp. et Cler. Alex.: ‘De Verbi autem Incarnatione et 
fide credimus in Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, ex Virgine Maria 
natum, quod Ipse est sempiternus Dei Filius et Verbum, non autem homo a 
Deo assumptus, ut alius sit ab Ilo; neque enim hominem assumpsit Dei 
Filius, ut alius ab ipso exsistat. Sed cum perfectus Deus esset, factus est 
simul Homo Perfectus ex Virgine Incarnatus.’ Labbe et Coss. Cone. ili. 511. 

ἃ Cf. more especially St. Greg. Thaumaturgi, Orat. Panegyr. in Origenem, 
n. 4; Lact. Div. Inst. iy. 22, 29- x Labbe, i. 845-850. 


 [ LEoT. 


Ts the language of the Fathers ‘mere rhetoric?’ 417 


the most characteristic teaching of their predecessors. Certainly 
it did not occur to them that the Catholic language of earlier 
writers had been ‘mere rhetoric, and could, as such, be disre- 
garded. What is the real meaning of this charge of ‘rhetoric’ 
which is brought so freely against the early Christian fathers ? 
It really amounts to saying that a succession of men who were 
at least intelligent and earnest, were nevertheless, when writing 
upon the subject which lay nearest to their hearts, wholly unable 
to command that amount of jealous self-control, and cautious 
accuracy in the use of language, which might save them from 
misrepresenting their most fundamental convictions. Let us 
ask ourselves whether this judgment be morally probable? 
Doubtless the fathers felt strongly, and, being sincere men, they 
wrote as they felt. But they were not always exhorting or 
declaiming or perorating: they wrote, at times, in the temper of 
cold unimpassioned reasoners, who had to dispute their ground 
inch by inch with pagan or heretical opponents. Tertullian is 
not always ‘fervid ;’ St. Chrysostom is not always eloquent ; 
Origen does not allegorize under all circumstances ; St. Ambrose 
can interpret Scripture literally and morally as well as mystically. 
The fathers were not a uniform series of poets or transcenden- 
talists. Many of them were eminently practical, or, if you will, 
prosaic ; and they continually wrote in view of hostile criticism, 
as well as in obedience to strong personal convictions. To men 
like Justin, Origen, and Cyprian the question of the Divinity of 
our Lord was one of an interest quite as pressing and practical 
as any that moves the leaders of political or commercial or scien- 
tific opinion in the England of to-day. And when men write © 
with their lives in their hands, and moreover believe that the 
endless happiness of their fellow-creatures depends in no slight 
degree upon the conscientious accuracy with which they express 
themselves, they are not likely to yield to the temptation of 
writing for the miserable object of mere rhythmical effect ;—they 
may say what others deem strong and startling things without 
being, in the depreciatory sense of the term, ‘rhetorical.’ 

But,—to be just,—those who insist most eagerly. upon the 
‘rhetorical’ shortcomings of the fathers, are not accustomed to 
deny to them under all circumstances the credit of writing with 
intelligence and upon principle. If, for example, a father uses 
expressions, however inadvertently or provisionally, which appear 
to contradict the general current of Church teaching, he is at 
once welcomed as a serious writer who is entitled to marked and 
respectful attention. Critics who lay most stress upon the 
VII | Ee 


418 Doubtful statements in ante-Nicene writers. 


charge of unprincipled rhetoric as brought against the fathers 
are often anxious to take advantage of the argument which 
screens the fathers and which they themselves reject. ‘Give 
that argument,’ they say, ‘its full and honest scope. Ifthe Nicene 
fathers were not mere rhetoricians, neither were the ante-Nicene. 
If Athanasius, Basil, and the Gregories are to be taken at their 
word, so are Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, and their contem- 
poraries. If the orthodox language of one period is not rhetoric, 
then the doubtful or unorthodox language of another period is 


not rhetoric. If for the moment we admit the principle upon 


which you are insisting, we claim that it shall be applied impar- 
tially,—to the second century as to the fourth, to the language 
which is said to favour Arius, no less than to the language which 
is insisted upon by the friends of Athanasius.’ 

‘Ts it not notorious,’ men ask, ‘that some ante-Nicene writers 
at times use language which falls short of, if it does not contra- 
dict, the doctrine of the Nicene Council? Does hot St. Justin 
Martyr, for instance, speak of the Son as subserving the Father’s 
Willy? nay, as being begotten of Him at His Will#? Does not 
Justin even speak of Christ as “another God under the Creator? ?” 
Do not Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, and St. Hippolytus 
apply the language of Scripture respecting the generation of the 
Word to His manifestation at the creation of the world, as a dis- 
tinct being from God? Do they not so distinguish between the 
λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and the λόγος mpodopixds as to imply that the 
Word was hypostatized only at the creation»? Does not Clement 
of Alexandria implicitly style the Word the Second Principle of 
thingsé? Does he not permit himself to say that the Nature of 


the Son is most close to the Sole Almighty One?? Although » 


Origen first spoke of the Saviour as being “ ever-begotten °,” has 
he not,-amidst much else that is questionable, contrasted the 
Son,.as the immediate Creator of the world, with the Father as 
the original Creatorf? Did not Dionysius of Alexandria use 


y Tryph. 126: ὑπηρετῶν τῇ βουλῇ αὐτοῦ. Cf. Athan. Treat. 1. 118, note n. 

z Ibid. 128. But cf. Athan. Treat. ii. p. 486, note g. 

@ Dial. contr. Tryph. c. 56: Θεὸς ἕτερος ὑπὸ τὸν ποιητήν. 

Ὁ Petav. 3.6; Newman’s Arians, p. 106. But see Athan. Treat. i. 113, 
note z; and Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. iii. 5. 6. 7, 8. 

¢ Strom. lib. vii. 3, p. 509, apud Pet.: δεύτερον αἴτιον. 

ἃ Ibid. 2, p. 504: ἡ Υἱοῦ φύσις, ἣ τῷ μόνῳ Παντοκράτορι προσεχεστάτη. 
Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. 6, 6. 

© ὃ Σωτὴρ del γεννᾶται. Apud Routh, Rel. Sacr. iv. 354. 

{ Orig. contr. Cels. vi. 60, apud Petav. de Trin. i. 4, 5: τὸν μὲν προσεχῶς 
δημιουργὸν εἶναι τὸν Tidy τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγον καὶ ὡσπερεὶ αὐτουργὺν τοῦ κόσμου" 
τὸν δὲ Πάτερα. ... εἶναι πρώτως δημιουργόν. , 


[ LECT. 


Doubtful statements tn ante-Nicene writers. 419 


language which he was obliged to account for, and which is re- 
pudiated by St. Basil? Was not Lucian of Antioch excommu- 
nicated, and, martyr though he was, regarded as the founder of 
an heterodox sect? Is not Tertullian said to be open to the 
charge that he combated Praxeas with arguments which did 
the work of Ariusi? Has he not, in his anxiety to avoid the 
Monarchianist confusion of Persons, spoken of the Son as a 
“derivation from, and portion of, the whole Substance of the 
Father =,” or even as if once He was ποὺ} ἢ Does any Catholic 
writer undertake to apologise for the expressions of Lactantius 4 
Has not recent criticism tended somewhat to enhance the repu- 
tation of Petavius at the expense of Bishop Bull™? Nay, is not 
Bull’s. great work itself an illustration of what is at least the 
prima facie state of the case? Does it not presuppose a consider- 
able apparent discrepancy between some ante-Nicene and the 
post-Nicene writers? Is it not throughout explanatory and apo- 
logetic ? Can we deny that out of the long list of writers whom 
Bull reviews, he has, for one cause or another, to explain the 
language of nearly one-half?’ 

This line of argument in an earlier guise has been discussed 
so fully by a distinguished predecessor® in the present Lecture, 
that it may suffice to notice very summarily the considerations 
which must be taken into account, if justice is to be done, both: 
to its real force and to the limits which ought to be, but which 
are not always, assigned to it. 

(a) Undoubtedly, it should be frankly granted that some of 
the ante-Nicene writers do at times employ terms which, judged 
by a Nicene standard, must be pronounced unsatisfactory, You 
might add to the illustrations which have already been quoted ; 
and you might urge that, if they admit of a Catholic interpreta- 
tion, they do not always invite one. For in truth these ante- 


8. Cf. Pet. de Trin. i. 4, 10; St. Bas. Ep. 9. But cf. Athan. Sent. Dion. 

h Alexander ap. Theodoret. Hist. lib. i. c. 4; Pet. de Trin. i. 4, 13. 

_ i Petavius attacks him especially on the score of this treatise. De Trin. i. 
5,2: ‘Opinionem explicat suam,’ says Petavius, ‘que etiam Arianorum 
heresim impietate et absurditate superat.’ For a fairer estimate, see Klee, 
Dogmengeschichte, ii. 6. 2. : 

k Adv. Prax. c. 9: ‘Pater enim tota Substantia est, Filius verd derivatio 
totius et portio.” See the remarks of Baur, Dogmengeschichte, i. 444, to 
which, however, a study of the context will yield a sufficient answer ; 6. g. 
c. 8: ‘Sermo in Patre semper..... nunquam separatus a Patre.’ 

1 Adv. Hermog. c. 3. See Bull, Def. iii. 10. Comp. Ibid. ii. 7. 

m The writer himself would on no account be understood to assent to this 
opinion. Even in criticizing Bull, Dr. Newman admits that he does his 
work ‘triumphantly.’ Developm. p. 159.. n Dr. Burton. 


VII | Ee 2 


420 Somteante-Nicenewriters who held the her fect faith — 


Nicene fathers were feeling their way, not towards the substance 
of the faith, which they possessed in its fulness, but towards 
that intellectual mastery both of its relationship to outer forms 
of thought, and of its own internal harmonies and system, which 
is obviously a perfectly distinct gift from the simple possession 
of the faith itself. As Christians they possessed the faith itself. 
The faith, delivered once for all, had been given to the Church 
in its completeness by the apostles. But the finished interlectual 
survey and treatment of the faith is a superadded acquirement ; 
it is the result of conflict with a hostile criticism, and of devout 
reflections matured under the guidance of the Spiritual Truth. 
Knowledge of the drift and scope of particular lines of specula- 
tion, knowledge of the real force and value of a new terminology, 
comes, whether to a man or to a society, in the way of education 
and after the discipline of partial and temporary failure. Heresy 
indirectly contributed to form the Church’s mind : it gave point 
and sharpness to current conceptions of truth by its mutilations 
and denials ; it illustrated the fatal tendencies of novel lines of 
speculation, or even of misleading terms; it unwittingly forced 
on an elucidation of the doctrines of the Church by its subtle 
-and varied opposition. But before heresy had thus accomplished 
its providential work, individual Church teachers might in per- 
fect good faith attempt to explain difficulties, or to win op- 
ponents, by enterprising speculations, in this or that. direction, 
which were not yet shewn to be perilous to truth. Not indeed» 
that the Universal Church, in her collective capacity, was ever 
committed to any of those less perfect statements of doctrine 
which belong to the ante-Nicene period. Particular fathers or 
schools of thought within her might use terms and illustrations 
which she afterwards disavowed ; but then, they had no Divine ° 

- guarantee of inerrancy, such as had been vouchsafed to the entire 
body of the faithful. They were in difficult and untried circum- 
stances; they were making experiments in unknown regions of 
thought ; their language was tentative and provisional. Com- 
pared with the great fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, 
who spoke when collective Christendom had expressed or was 
expressing its mind in the Gicumenical Councils, and who there- 
fore more nearly represented it, and were in a certain sense its 
accepted organs, such ante-Nicene writers occupy a position 
inferior, if not in love and honour, yet certainly in weight of 
authority. If without lack of reverence to such glorious names 
the illustration is permissible, the Alexandrian teachers of the 
second and third centuries were, relatively to their meee of 
LECT, 


had not mastered all rts intellectual bearings. 421 


the age of the Councils, in the position of young or half-educated 
persons, who know at bottom what they mean, who know yet 
more distinctly what they do not mean, but who as yet have not 
so measured and sounded their thoughts, or so tested the instru- 
ment by which thought finds expression, as to avoid misrepre- 
senting their meaning more or less considerably, before they 
succeed in conveying it with accuracy. When, for example, 
St. Justin, and after him Tertullian, contrast the visibility of the 
Son with the invisibility of the Father, all that their language 1s 
probably intended to convey is that the Son had from everlasting 
designed to assume a nature which would render Him visible. 
When again St. Justin speaks of the Son as a Minister of God, 
this expression connects Him without explanation with the 
ministering Angel of the Old Testament, Yet it need involve 
nothing beyond a reference to His humiliation in the days of His 
Flesh. <A like interpretation may fairly be put upon the ultra- 
subordinationist terms used by Origen and Tertullian in dealing 
with two forms of heretical Monarchianism ; and upon the mis- 
construed phrases of the saintly Dionysius which expressed 
his resistance to a full-blown Sabellianism®. Language was 
employed which obviously admitted of being misunderstood. It 
would not have been used at a later period. ‘It may be,’ says 
St. Jerome, with reference to some of the ante-Nicene fathers, 
‘that they simply fell into errors, or that they wrote in a sense 
distinct from that which lies on the surface of their writings, 
or that the copyists have gradually corrupted their writings. 
Or at any rate before that Arius, like “the sickness that de- 
stroyeth in the noonday,” was born in Alexandria, these writers 
spoke, in terms which meant no harm, and which were less 
cautious than such as would be ‘used now, and which accord- 
ingly are open to the unfriendly construction which ill-disposed 
persons put upon them P.’ 

Indeed it is observable that the tentative and perplexing 
- Christological language which was used by earlier fathers, at 
a time when the quicksands of religious thought had not yet 
been explored by the shipwrecks of heresy, does not by any 


ο Petav. de Trin. i. 4, To. 

P Apolog. adv. Ruffin. ii. Oper. tom. iv. p. ii. p. 409, apud Petav. de Trin. 
i. I: ‘ Fieri potest, ut vel simpliciter erraverint, vel alio sensu scripserint, vel 
a librariis imperitis eorum paullatim scripta corrupta sint. Vel certé, ante- 
quam in Alexandria, quasi demonium meridianum, Arius nasceretur, inno- 
center quedam et nimis cauté locuti sunt, et que non possint perversorum 
SEN Ὡς calumniam declinare.’ Cf. St. Athan. contr. Ar. ili. 59. 
VII : 2 


Bin: νά ~_ τ : χε, . 
f εν ἢ 
“a 


4 


422 A nte-Nicene subordinationistlanguage explained 


means point, as is sometimes assumed, in an Arian direction 
exclusively. If, for instance, a few phrases in St. Justin may 
be cited by Arianism with a certain plausibility, a similar appeal 
to him is open from the opposite direction of Sabellianism, In . 
his anxiety to discountenance Emanatist conceptions of the 
relation of the Logos to the Father, Justin hastily refers the 
beginning of the Personal Subsistence of the Word to revelation 
or to the creation, and he accordingly speaks of the Word as 
being caused by the Will of God. But Justin did not place the 
Son on the footing of a creature; he did not hold a strict 
subordinationism4 ; since he teaches distinctly that the Logos 
is of the Essence of God, that He is potentially and eternally in 
Godt. Thus St. Justin’s language at first sight seems to em-— 
brace two opposite and not yet refuted heresies: both can appeal ~ 
to him with equal justice, or rather with equal want of its. 

(8) Reflect further that a doctrine may be held in its integrity, 
and yet be presented to men of two different periods, under 
aspects in many ways different. So it was with the doctrine of 
Christ’s Divinity, in the ante-Nicene as compared with the post- 
Nicene age of its promulgation. While the Gospel was still 
struggling with paganism throughout the empire, the Church 
undoubtedly laid the utmost possible stress upon the Unity of 
the Supreme Being. For this was the primal truth which she 
had to assert most emphatically in the face of polytheism. In 
order to do this it was necessary to insist with particular em- 

- phasis upon those relations which secure and explain the Unity 
᾿ς of the Divine Persons in the Blessed Trinity. That, in the 
ineffable mystery of the Divine Life, the Father is the Fount or 
Source of Godhead, from Whom by eternal Generation and 
Procession respectively, the Son and the Spirit derive their 
Personal Being, was the clear meaning of the theological state- 
ments of the New Testament. When, then, Origen speaks of 
the Father as the ‘ first Godt,’ he means what the Apostle meant 
by the expression, ‘One God and Father οἵ all, Who is above 
all.’ He implicitly means that, independently of all time and 
inferiority, the Son’s Life was derived from, and, i that sense, 
subordinate to the Life of the Father. Now it is obvious that 
to speak with perfect accuracy upon such a subject, so as to 


a Dorner, Person Christi, Erster Theil, p. 426, n. 22. 
τ Contr. Tryph. 6. 61: ὁ Θεὸς γεγέννηκε δύναμίν τινα ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ AoyeKhv. . 
s Dorner, Person Christi, Erster Theil, p. 426. See the whole passage, in 
which this is very ably argued against Semisch. © 
t Contr. Cels. vi. 47: 6 πρῶτος καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι Ocds. 
: [ LECT. 


by the Church's duties towards Polytheism. 423 


express the ideas of derivation and subordinateness, while avoiding 
the cognate but false and disturbing ideas of posteriority in 
time and inferiority of nature, was difficult. For as yet the 
dogmatic language of the Church was comparatively unfixed, 
and a large discretion was left to individual teachers. They used 
material images to express what was in their thoughts. These 
- images, drawn from created things, were of course not adequate 
to the Uncreated Object Which they were designed to illustrate. 
Yet they served to introduce an, imperfect conception of It. 
The fathers who employed them, having certain Emanatist 
theories in view, repeatedly urged that the Son is derived from 
the Father in accordance with the Divine attributes of Will and 
Power. Looking to our human experience, we conceive of will 
as prior to that which it calls into being; but in God the 
Eternal Will and the Eterna] Act are coincident; and the 
phrase of St. Justin which refers the existence of ‘the Logos to 
the Divine Will is only misunderstood because it is construed in 
an anthropomorphic sense. In like manner the Alexandrian dis- 
tinction between the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and the λόγος προφορικὸς 
fell in naturally with the subordinationist teaching in the ante- 
Nicene Church. It could, in a sense, be said that the Son left the 
Bosom of the Father when’ He went forth to create, and the act 
of creation was thus described asa kind of second generation of 
the Son. But the expression did not imply, as it has been un- 
derstood to imply, a denial of His eternal Generation, and of His 
unbegotten, unending Subsistence in God. This indeed is plain 
from the very writers who use itX. Generally speaking, the 
early fathers are bent on insisting on the subordination (κατὰ 
τάξιν) of the Son, as protecting and explaining the doctrine of 
the Divine Unity. If some of these expressed themselves too 
incautiously or boldly, the general truth itself was never dis- 


ἃ ‘In some instances [of ante-Nicene language] which are urged, it is 
quite obvious on the surface that the writer is really wishing to express the 
idea of the Son’s generation being absolutely coeval with the Eternal Being 
of the Father, and is using the examples from the natural world, where 
the derivation is most immediately consequent upon the existence of the 
thing derived from, in order broadly to impress that idea of coeval upon 
the reader’s mind. ‘The Son,” says St. Clement of Alexandria, “ issues 
from the Father quicker than light from the sum’’ Here, however, the very 
aim of the illustration to express simultaneousness is turned against it, and 
special attention is called to the word “quicker,” as if the writer had only 
degrees of quickness in his mind, and only made the Son’s generation from His 
source ‘‘quicker’’ than that of light from its source, and not absolutely coeval.’ 
Christian Remembrancer, Jan. 1847, Art. Newman on Development, p. 237. 

ἼΩ the examination of passages in Newman’s Arians, pp. 215--218.᾽ 
VII 


424 Real mina of the ante-Nicene Church declared, 


credited in the Church. Subordinationism was indeed allowed | 


to fall somewhat into the shade, when the decline of paganism 
made it possible, and the activities of Arianism made it 
necessary, to contemplate Jesus Christ in the absoluteness of 
His Personal Godhead rather than in that relation of a sub- 
ordinate, in the sense of an eternally derived subsistence, in 
which He also stands to the Eternal Father. But Bishop Bull has 
shewn how earnestly such a doctrine of subordination was also 
taught in the Nicene period; and at this day we confess it in 
the Nicene Creed itself. And the stress which was laid upon it 
in the second and third centuries, and which goes far to explain 
much of the language which is sometimes held to be of doubtful 
orthodoxy, is in reality perfectly consistent with the broad fact 
that from the first the general current of Church language pro- 
claims the truth that Jesus Christ is God. - 

(vy) For that truth was beyond doubt the very central feature 
οὗ the teaching of the ante-Nicene Church, even when Church 
teachers had not yet recognised all that it necessarily involved, 
and had not yet elaborated the accurate statement of its rela- 
tionship to other truths around it. The writers whose less- 
considered expressions are brought forward in favour of an 
opposite conclusion do not sustain it. If, as we have seen, 
Justin may be quoted by those who push the+Divinity of Christ 
to the denial of His Personal distinction from the Fathery, no 
less than by Arianizers ; so also, as Petavius himself admits, do 
both Origen and Tertullian anticipate the very language of the 
Nicene Creed. Nor, when their expressions are fairly examined, 
can it be denied that the writers who imported the philo- 
sophical category of the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικὸς into 
Christian theology did really believe with all their hearts in the 
eternal Generation of the Word. For it should especially be 
remarked that when the question of our Lord’s Divinity was 
broadly proposed to the mind of the ante-Nicene Church, the 
answer was not a doubtful or hesitating one. Any recognised 
assault upon it stirred the heart of the Church to energetic 
protest. When Victor of Rome excommunicated the Quarto- 
decimans, his censures were answered either by open remon- 
strance or by tacit disregard, throughout Gaul and the East, 
When he cut off Theodotus from the communion of the Church, 
the act commanded universal acquiescence ; the Christian heart 
thrilled with indignation at ‘the God-denying apostasy’ of the 

Υ Petay. de Trin. i. 6, 6. z Ibid. i. 4, 6; 5, 3. 
@ Eus. Hist. Eccl. v. 24. 
A [ LECT. 


whenever Christ's Godhead was called in question. 425 


tanner of Byzantium». When Dionysius of Alexandria, writing 
with incautious zeal against the Sabellians, was charged with 
heterodoxy on the subject of our Lord’s Divine Nature, he at once 
addressed to Dionysius of Rome an explanation which is in fact 
an anticipation of the language of Athanasius®. When Paulus 
of Samosata appeared in one of the first sees of Christendom, 
the universal excitement, the emphatic protests, the final, mea- 
sured, and solemn condemnation which he provoked, proved how 
deeply the Divinity of Jesus Christ was rooted in the heart of the 
Church of the third century. Moreover, unless Christ’s absolute 
Godhead had been thus a matter of Catholic belief, the rise 
of such a heresy as that of Sabellianism would have been im- 
possible. Sabellianism overstates that which Arianism denies. 
Sabellianism presupposes the truth of Christ’s Godhead, which, 
if we may so speak, it exaggerates even to the point of rejecting 
His Personal distinctness from the Father. If the belief of the 
ante-Nicene Church had been really Arianizing, Noetus could 
not have appealed to it as he did, while perverting it to a denial 
of hypostatic distinctions in the Godhead¢; and Arius himself 
might have only passed for a representative of the subordina- 
tionism of Origen, and of the literalism of Antioch, instead of 
being condemned as a sophistical dialectician who had broken 
altogether with the historical tradition of the Church, by 
daring to oppose a central truth of her unchanging faith. 

The idea that our Lord’s Divinity was introduced into the 
belief and language of the Church at a period subsequent,to the 
death of the apostles, was indeed somewhat adventurously put 
forward by some early Humanitarians. Reference has already 
been made in another connection to an important passage, which 
is quoted by Eusebius from an anonymous writer who appears 
to have flourished in the early part of the third century. This 
passage enables us to. observe the temper and method of treat- 
ment encountered by any such theory in ante-Nicene times. 

The Humanitarian Artemon seems to have been an accom- 
plished philosopher and mathematician; and he maintained that 
the Divinity of Christ was imported into the Church during the 
episcopate of Zephyrinus, who succeeded Victor in the Roman 
chair. Now if this story could have been substantiated, it would 
have been necessary to suppose, either that the Church was the 


b Eus. Hist. Eccl. v. 28: τῆς ἀρνησιθέου ἀποστασίας. Epiphan. Her. 54. 
€ See St. Athan. de Sent. Dionysii, 6. 4, 564. 
ἃ St. Hippol. contr. Her. Noeti,c. 1: 6 δὲ ἀντίφτατο λέγων, “Τί οὖν κακὸν 
ποιῷ δοξάζων τὸν Χριστόν ;ἢ See also Epiphanius, Her. 57. 
Vil | 


426 Argument of ‘the Little Labyrinth. 


organ of a continuous and not yet completed revelation, or else 
that the doctrine was a human speculation unwarrantably added 
. to the simpler creed of an earlier age. But the writer to whom 
I have referred meets the allegation of Artemon by denying 
it point-blank. ‘Perchance,’ he archly observes, ‘what they 
[the Artemonites] say might be credible, were it not that the 
Holy Scriptures contradict them ; and then also there are works 
of certain brethren, older than the days of Victor, works 
written in defence of the truth, and against the heresies then 
prevailing. I speak of Justin and Miltiades, and Tatian and 
Clement, and many others, by all of whom the Divinity of 
Christ is asserted. For who,’ he continues, ‘knows not the 
works of Irenzeus and Melito, and the rest, in which Christ is 
announced as God and Mane? ‘This was the argument upon ~ 
which the Church of those ages instinctively fell back when she 
was. accused of adding to her creed. Particular writers might 
have understated truth ; or they might have ventured upon ex- 
pressions requiring explanation ; or they might have written 
economically as in view of particular lines of thought, and have 
been construed by others without the qualifications which were 
present to their own minds. But there could be no mistake 
about the continuous drift and meaning of the belief around 
which they moved, and which was always in the background of 
their ideas and language. There could be no room for the 
charge that they had invented a new dogma, when it could be 
shewn that the Church from the beginning, and the New Testa- 
ment itself, had taught what they were said to have invented. 

III. Of the objections to which the Homoousion is exposed 
in the present day, there are two which more particularly 
demand our attention. 

(a) ‘Is not the Homoousion,’ it is said, ‘a development? Was 
it not rejected at the Council of Antioch sixty years before it 
was received at Nicwa? Is not this fact indicative of a forward 
movement in the mind of the Church? Does it not shew that the 
tide of dogmatic belief was rising, and that it covered ground 
in the Nicene age which it had deliberately left untouched in 
the age preceding? And, if this be so, if we admit the prin- 
ciple of a perpetual growth in the Church’s creed ; why should 
we not accept the latest results of such a principle as un- 
equivocally as we close with its earlier results? If we believe 


e Bus. Hist. Eccl. v. 28. It is probable that St. Hippolytus wrote ‘The 
Little Labyrinth.’ . 
[ LECT. 


/ 


- 


Was the Hlomoousion a ‘development?’ 424 


that the Nicene decision is an assertion of the truth of God, 
why should we hesitate to adopt a similar belief respecting that 
proclamation of the sinless conception of the Blessed Virgin 
which startled Christendom twelve years ago, and which has 
since that date been added to the official creed of the largest 
section of the Christian Church ?’ 

Here, the first point to be considered turns on a question of 
words. What do we mean by a doctrinal development? Do we 
mean an explanation of an already existing idea or belief, pre- 
sumably giving to that belief greater precision and exactness in 
our own or other minds, but adding nothing whatever to its 
real areaf? Or do we mean the positive substantial growth of 
the belief itself, whether through an enlargement from within, 


_ just as the acorn developes into “the oak, or through an accretion 
from without of new intellectual matter gathered around it, like 


the aggrandisements whereby the infant colony developes into 
the powerful empire ? 


f In this sense a Development of Doctrine must necessarily be admitted. 
When the life of the individual soul is vigorous and healthy, there must be 
a continuously increasing knowledge of Divine Truth. St. Aug. in Joan. Ev. 
Tract. xiv. c. 3. ἢ. 5: ‘Crescat ergo Deus qui semper perfectus est, crescat 
in te. Quantd enim magis intelligis Deum, et quantd magis capis, videtur in 
te crescere Deus; in se autem non crescit, sed semper perfectus est. Intel- 
ligebas heri modicum; intelligis hodié ampliis, intelliges cras multd amplits: 
lumen ipsum Dei crescit in te; ita velut Deus crescit, qui semper perfectus 
manet. Quemadmodum si curarentur alicujus oculi ex pristina cecitate, et 
inciperet videre paululum lucis, et alia die plus videret, et tertia die amplits, 
videretur illi lux crescere: lux tamen perfecta est, sive ipse videat, sive non 
videat. Sic est et interior homo: proficit quidem in Deo, et Deus in illo 
videtur crescere ; ipse tamen mintitur, ut ἃ gloria sud decidat, et in gloriam 
Dei surgat.’ A somewhat analogous progress in the knowledge of Truth, 
received from Christ and His Apostles, is found in the collective Christian So- 
ciety. Vincent. Lerinens. Commonit. c. 28: ‘Nullusne ergd in Ecclesia Dei 
profectus? Habeatur plané et maximus: nam quis ille est tam invidus homi- 
nibus, tam exosus Deo, qui illud prohibere conetur? Crescat igitur oportet, et 
multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius 
hominis quam totius ecclesiz statum ac seculorum gradibus, intelligentia, 
scientia, sapientia.’ Not that this i increasing apprehension of the true force and 
bearings of the truth revealed in its fulness once for all involves any addition 
to or subtraction from that one unchanging body of truth. Commonit. c. 30: 
‘Fas est enim ut prisca illa coelestis philosophiz dogmata processu temporis 
excurentur, limentur, poliantur; sed nefas est ut commutentur, nefas ut ~ 
detruncentur, nefas ut mutilentur. Accipiant licet evidentiam, lucem, dis- 
tinctionem ; sed retineant necesse est plenitudinem, integritatem, proprieta- 
tem.’ There is then no real increase in the body of truth committed to the 
Church, but only a clearer perception on the part of the Church of the force 
and bearings of that truth which she had possessed in its completeness 
from the first. With some few drawbacks, this is fairly stated by Stauden- 
maier, Wetzer and Welte’s Diction. Encycl.; art Dogme. 


vir | 2 


428 True sense of the New Testament 


Now if it be asked, which is the natural sense of the word 
‘development,’ I reply that we ordinarily mean by it an actual 
enlargement of that which is said to be developed. And in that 
sense I proceed to deny that the Homoousion was a develop- 
ment. It was not related to the teaching of the apostles as an 
oak is related to an acorn.. Its real relation to their teaching 
was that of an exact and equivalent translation of the language 
of one intellectual period into the language of another. The 
New Testament had taught that Jesus Christ is the Lord of 
natures and of men}, of heaven, and of the spiritual world:; 
that He is the world’s Legislator, its King and its Judge*; that 
He is the Searcher of hearts!, the Pardoner of sins ™, the Well- 
spring of life"; that He is Giver of true blessedness and salva- 
tion 9, and the Raiser of the dead?; it distinctly attributed to 
Him omnipresence4, omnipotence’, omniscience’; eternity *, 
absolute likeness to the Father; absolute oneness with the 
Father%, an equal share in the honour due to the FatherY, a like 
claim upon the trust 5, the faith®, and the love» of humanity. 
The New Testament had spoken of Him as the Creator¢ and 
Preserver of the world4, as the Lord of all things, as the King 
of kings®, the Distributor of all graces‘, the Brightness of the 


s St.John y. 17; St. Matt. viii. 3, 13; ix. 6, 22, 25, 29; St. John iv. 50; 
v. 8. This power over nature He delegated to others: St. Matt. x. 1, 8; 
St. Mark xvi. 17; St. Luke x. 17; St. John xiv. 12; Acts iii. 6, 12, 163; ix. 
34; xvi. 18. h St. Matt. xxviii. 18-20; St. John v. 21, 22; xvii. 2. 

i St. Matt. vii. 21, 233; xviii. 18; xxvi. 64; St.John.i. 51; xx. 12, &c. 

k St. Matt. v.—vii.; xi. 29, 30; xv. 18; xviii. 19; xxv. 34,40; St. John 
viii. 36; xiv. 213; xv. 12; xx. 23, &c. 

1 St. John i. 47-50; ii. 24,253 iv. 17,18; vi. 15, 70; xvi. 19, 32; Rev. 
ii. 23. 

m St. Matt. ix. 2,6; St. Luke v. 20, 24; vii. 48; xxiv. 47; and St. John 
xx. 23, where He delegates the absolving power to others. 

. St. John iv. 13, 14; v. 21, 26, 40; vi. 47, 51-583 x. 28. 

° St. Matt. vii. 21 sq.; St. John vi. 39, 40; x. 28; Acts iv. 12; Heb. ii.10,14. 

P St. John v. 21, 25; xi. 25. Christ raises Himself from death: St. John 
ii. το ; x. 18. 4 Ibid. iii. 13; St. Matt. xviii. 20. 

r St. Matt. xxviii. 18 ; Phil. iii. 21; Heb. i. 3. 

5. St. Matt. xi. 27; St. John iii. 11-13 ; vi. 46; x. 15; Col. ii. 3. 

t St. John viii. 58 ; xvii. 5 ; Rev. i. 8; ii. 8; xxii. 12, 13. 

Ὁ St. John v. 17, 19, 21, 26; x. 28, 29; xiv. 7. 

x Ibid. x. 28, 30; xiv. Io. y Ibid. v. 23. 

z Tbid. xiv. 1; xvi. 33; Col.i. 27; St. Matt. xii. 21. , 

a St. John vi. 27; 1 St. John iii. 23 ; Acts xvi. 31 ; xx. 21. 

> 1 Cor. xvi. 22; St. John xiv. 23. 

¢ St. John i. 3; Col. i. 16; Heb. i. 2, 10. ἃ Col. i. 17; Heb. i. 3. 

e Acts x. 36; Jude 4; Rev. xvii. 14; xix. 16. 

£ St. John i, 12, 14, 16, 173 2 Thess. ii. 16. 

: [ LEcT. 


embodied in the Flomoousion. 429 


Father’s Glory and the Impress of His Being ὃ ; as being in the 
form of God}, as containing in Himself all the fulness of the 
Godheadi, as being God*. This and much more to the same 
purpose had been said in the New Testament. When therefore 
the question was raised whether Jesus Christ was or was not 
‘of one substance with’ the Father, it became clear that of two 
courses one must be adopted. Either an affirmative answer 
must be given, or the teaching of the apostles themselves must 
be explained away). As a matter of fact the Nicene fathers 
only affirmed, in the philosophical language of the fourth 
century, what our Lord and the apostles had taught in the 
popular dialects of the first. If then the Nicene Council 
developed, it was a development by explanation. It was a deve- 
lopment which placed the intrinsically unchangeable dogma, 
committed to the guardianship of the Church, in its true relation 
to the new intellectual world -that had grown up around Chris- 
tians in the fourth century. Whatever vacillations of thought 
might have been experienced here or there, whatever doubtful 
expressions might have escaped from theologians of the inter- 
vening period, no real doubt could be raised as to the meaning 
of the original teachers of Christianity, or as to the true drift 
and main current of the continuous traditional belief of the 
Church. The Nicene divines interpreted in a new language the 
belief of their first fathers in the faith. They did not enlarge 
it ; they vehemently protested that they were simply preserving 
and handing on what they had received. The very pith of their 
objection to Arianism was its novelty: it was false because it 
was of recent origin™. They themselves were forced to say what 
they meant by their creed, and they said it. Their explanation 
added to the sum of authoritative ecclesiastical language, but it 
did not add to the number of articles in the Christian faith: the 
area of the creed was not enlarged. The Nicene Council did not 
vote a new honour to Jesus Christ which He had not before 


& Heb. i. 3; Col. i. 15; 2 Cor. iv. 4. 

h Phil. ii. 6. i Col. ii. ; St. John i. 14, 16. 

k St. John i. 1; Acts xx. 28; Rom. ix. 5; Titus ii. 13; 1 St. John v. 20. 
Compare Rom. viii. g-11 with Rom. xiv. Io-12. 

1 Mohler, Symbolik, p. 610: ‘Waren sie (the Socinians) scharfere Denker — 
gewesen, so mussten sie zur Einsicht gelangen, dass, wenn das Evangelium 
den Sohn als ein persdnliches Wesen, und zugleich als Gott darstellt, wie 
die Socinianer nicht laiigneten (Christ. Relig. institut. bibl. frat. Pol. tom. i. 
p. 655. Es wird Joh. i. 1; xx. 21 citirt.), kein anderes Verhaltniss zwischen 
ihm und dem Vater denkbar sei, als jenes, welches die katholische Kirche von 
Anfang an geglaubt hatte.’ m Socr. Hist. Eccl. i. 6. 

Vil | 


430 Why the Homoousion was rejected 


possessed : it defined more clearly the original and unalterable 
bases of that supreme place which from the days of the apostles 
He had held in the thought and heart, in the speculative and 
active life of Christendom. 

_ The history of the symbol Homoousion during the third 
century might, at first sight, seem to favour the position, that 
its adoption at Niczea was of the nature of an accretive develop- 
ment. Already, indeed, Dionysius and others (perhaps Origen) _ 
had employed it to express the faith of the Church ; but it had 
been, so to speak, disparaged and discoloured by the patronage 
of the Valentinians and the Manicheans. In the Catholic theo- 
logy the word denoted full participation in the absolute self- 
existing Individuality of God». Besides this, the word suggested 
the distinct personality of its immediate Subject ; unless it had ~ 
suggested this, it would have been tautologous. In ordinary 
language it was applied to things which are only similar to each 
other, and are considered as one by an abstraction of our minds. 
No such abstraction was possible in the contemplation of God. 
His οὐσία is Himself, peculiar to Himself, and One; and there- 
fore to be ὁμοούσιος with Him is te be internal to that Uncreated 
Nature Which is utterly and necessarily separate from all created 
beings. But the Valentinians used the word to denote the 
relation of their AZons to the Divine Pleroma; and the Mani- 
cheeans said that the soul of man was ὁμοούσιον τῷ Θεῷ, In a 
materialistic sense. When then it was taken into the service of 
these Emanatist doctrines, the Homoousion implied nothing, 
higher than a generic or specific bond of unity®. These uses of 
the word implied that οὐσία itself was something beyond God, 
and moreover, as was suggested by its Manichzean associations, 
something material. Paulus of Samosata availed himself of this 
depreciation of the word to attack its Catholic use as being really 


n §t. Cyril of Alexandria defines οὐσία as πρᾶγμα αὐθύπαρκτον, μὴ δεόμενον 
ἑτέρου πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σύστασιν. Apud Suicer. in voc. οὐσία. 
© ‘Quoovc1os properly means of the same nature—i. e. under the same 
general nature or species. It is applied to things which are but similar to 
each other, and are considered as one by an abstraction of our minds. Thus 
Aristotle speaks of the stars being ὁμοούσια with each other.’ Newman, e 
Arians, p. 203. ‘Valentinianism,’ he says (p. 206), ‘applied the word to 
the Creator and His creatures in this its original philosophical sense. The 
Manichees followed .... they too were Emanatists,’ &c. But such a usage 
offends against ‘the great revealed principle’ of ‘the incommunicable ... 
Individuality of the Divine Essence :’ according to which principle ὁμοούσιος, 
as used of the Son, defined Him as ‘necessarily included in That Individuality.’ 
See Dr. Newman’s valuable note on St. Athanasius’ Treatises, i. 152, note a 
(Libr. Fath.); Ibid. 35, note ¢; and Soc. i. 8. 
[ LECT. 


at Antioch and adopted at Nicea. 431 


materialistic. Paulus argued that ‘if the Father and the Son 
were ὁμοούσιοι, there was some common οὐσία in which they 
partook,’ higher than, and ‘distinct from, the Divine Persons 
themselves.’ Firmilian and Gregory were bent, not upon the 
philological object of restoring the word ὁμοούσιος to its real 
sense, but upon the religious duty of asserting the true relation 
of the Son to the Father, in language the meaning of which 
would be plain to their contemporaries. The Nicene Fathers, 
on the other hand, were able, under altered circumstances, to 
vindicate for the word its Catholic meaning, unaffected by any 
Emanatist gloss; and accordingly, in their hands,it protected 
the very truth which at Antioch, sixty years earlier, it would 
have obscured. St. Athanasius tells us that ‘the fathers who 
deposed the Samosatene took the word Homoousion in a 
corporeal sense. ΕῸΥ Paulus sophisticated by saying thatif.... 
Christ was consubstantial with the Father, there must necessarily 
be three substances, one which was prior and two others spring- 
ing from it. Therefore, with reason, to avoid that sophism of 
Paulus, the fathers said that Christ was not consubstantial, that 
is, that He was not in that relation to the Father which Paulus 
had in his mind. On the other hand,’ continues St. Athanasius, 
‘those who condemned the Arian heresy saw through the cunning 
of Paulus, and considered that in things incorporeal, especially 
in God, “consubstantial” did not mean what he had supposed ; 
so they, knowing the Son to be begotten of the Substance,..... 
with reason called Him consubstantial4.’ Paulus, as a subtle 
and hardheaded dialectician, had contrived to impose upon the 
term a sense, which either made the Son an inferior being or 
else destroyed the Unity of God. He used the word, as St. 
Hilary says, as mischievously as the Arians rejected the use of 10; 
while the fathers at Antioch set it aside from a motive as loyal 


P Newman, Arians, p. 209. See the whole passage. 

a St. Athan. De Synodis, § 45; cf. Cave, Hist. Lit. i. 134. ‘Non aliud 
dicit Athanasius quam Paulum ex detorto Catholicorum vocabulo sophisticum 
argumentum contra Christi Divinitatem excogitasse; nempe, nisi confiteremur 
Christum ex homine Deum factum esse, sequeretur ipsum Patri esse ὁμοούσιον, 
ac proinde tres esse substantias, unam quidem primariam, duas ex ill& deri- 
vatas: σωματικῶς enim et crasso sensu vocabulum accepit, quasi in essentia 
diviné, perinde ac in rebus corporeis usu venit, ut ab un& substantia altera, 
eaque diversa, derivetur. Quocirca, ne hac voce heretici ulterids abuterentur, 
silentio supprimendam censuerunt patres Antiocheni: non quod Catholicum 
vocis sensum damnarent, sed ut omnem sophisticé cavillandi occasionem 
hereticis preriperent, ut ex Athanasio, Basilio, aliisque, abunde liquet.’ 

r St. Hil. de Syn. 86: ‘Male Homoousion Samosatenus confessus est, sed 
nunquam melitis Ariani negaverunt.’ 

VII | 


φ' = 


432 Adoption of the Homoousion not to be paralleled 


to Catholic truth as was that which led to its adoption at Nica’. 
Language is worth, after all, just what it means to those who 
use it. Origen had rejected and Tertullian had defended the 
προβολὴ from an identical theological motive ; and the opposite 
lines of action, adopted by the Councils of Antioch and Nica 
respectively, are so far from proving two distinct beliefs respect- 
ing the higher Nature of Jesus Christ, that when closely examined, 
they exhibit an absolute identity of creed and purpose brought 
face to face with two distinct sets of intellectual circumstances. 
The faith and aim of the Church was one and unchanging. But 
the question, whether a particular symbol would represent her 
mind with practical accuracy, received an answer at Antioeh 
which would have been an error at Nicea. The Church looked 
hard at the Homoousion at Antioch, when heresy had perverted 
its popular sense ; and she set it aside. She examined it yet 
more penetratingly at Nicea; and from then until now it has 
been the chosen symbol of her unalterable faith in the literal 
Godhead of her Divine Head. 

Therefore between the imposition of the Homoousion and the 
recent definition of the Immaculate Conception, there is no real 
correspondence. It is not merely that the latter is accepted only 
by a section of the Christian Church, and was promulgated by 
an authority whose modern claims the fathers of Nicszea would 
have regarded with sincere astonishment. The difference between 
the two cases is still more fundamental ; it lies in the substance 
of the two definitions respectively. The Nicene fathers did but 
assert a truth which had been held to be of primary, vital import 
from the first ; they asserted it in terms which brought it vividly 
home to the intelligence of their day. They were explaining old 
truth ; they were not setting forth as truth that which had before 
been matter of opinion. But the recent definition asserts that an 
hypothesis, unheard of for centuries after the first promulgation 
of the Gospel, and then vehementiy maintained and as vehe- 
mently controvertedt by theologians of at least equal claims 
to orthodoxy, is a fact of Divine revelation, to be received by all 
who would receive the true faith of the Redeemer. In the one 
case an old truth is vindicated by an explanatory reassertion ; in 
the other the assertion of a new fact is added to the Creed. The 


s Routh, Rel. Sacr. iii. 360, ed. 1846. See too Dr. Newman’s note 2, in 
St. Athanasius’ Select Treatises, i. p. 166. (Oxf. Libr. Fath.). 

t Cf. especially the treatise of the Dominican, John de Torquemada, 
Cardinal de Turrecremata, entitled, Tractatus de Veritate Conceptionis B. 
Virginis. Rome, 1547, 4to. It is exceedingly rare. Cf. note G in ee 

LECT. 


with the definition of the Lmmaculate Conception. 433 


Nicene fathers only maintained in the language of their day 
the original truth that Jesus Christ is God: but the question 
whether the Conception of Mary was or was not sinless is a 
distinct question of fact, standing by itself, with no necessary 
bearing upon her office in the economy of the Incarnation, and 
not related in the way of an explanatory vindication to any 
originally revealed truth beyond it. It is one thing to reassert 
the revealed Godhead of Jesus ; it is, in principle, a fundament- 
ally distinct thing to ‘decree a new honour’ to Mary. The Ni- 
cene decision is the act of a Church believing itself commissioned 
to guard a body of truth which had been delivered from heaven 
in its integrity, once for all. The recent definition appears to 
presuppose a Church which can do more than guard the ancient 
faith, which is empowered to make actual additions to the num- 
ber of revealed certainties, which is the organ no less than the 
recipient of a continuous revelation". It is one thing to say 
that language has changed its value, and that a particular term 
which was once considered misleading will now serve to vindicate 
an acknowledged truth; it is another thing to claim the power of 
transfiguring a precarious and contradicted opinion, resting on 


ἃ T have been reminded that Roman Catholics do not admit this (see the 
‘Month,’ Nov. 1867,) and, at the instance of my reviewer, I quote with plea- 
sure the following language of the Bull Ineffabilis, which is substantially that 
of Vincent of Lerins, and which will command the assent of English Church- 
men. The Church of Christ, says the Bull, ‘ sedula depositorum apud se 
dogmatum custos, et vindex, nihil in his unquam permutat, nihil minuit, 
nihil addit, sed omni industria vetera fideliter sapienterque tractando si qua 
antiquitis informata sunt, et Patrum fides sevit, ita limare expolire studet, 
ut prisca illa ccelestis doctrine dogmata accipiant evidentiam, lucem, distinc- 
tionem, sed retineant plenitudinem, integritatem, proprietatem, ac in suo 
tantum genere crescant, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, e&demque 
sententia,’ p. 11. But the question is whether, if the principle thus stated 
had been really adhered to, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary could have been defined to be an article of necessary faith, Itis one 
thing to propose a new and’ necessary definition or explanation of a truth 
which has been confessed from the first ; it is another thing to say that a fact, 
the truth of which has been controverted by a series of writers of the highest 
authority, is now so certain that it must be received as matter of faith. Should 
not the ‘ nihil addit’ of the Bull, alone have sufficed to render the definition 
impossible ? See Observations d’un Théologien sur la Bulle de Pie IX, relative 
ἃ la Conception de la Sainte Vierge, Paris, 1855, pp. 28-38 ; La Croyance ἃ 
VPImmaculée Conception de la Sainte Vierge ne peut devenir dogme de foi, 
par M. PAbbé Laborde, Paris, 1854, pp. 77-83. Can the assertion that 
the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is a certainty of faith, be 
really rested upon any other ground, than an assumption in the modern 
Church of some power to discern and proclaim truths which were altogether 
unknown to the Church of the Apostles? 


vit] Ff 


434 Was a definition of the Faith really needed ? 


no direct scriptural or primitive testimony, and impugned in 
terms by writers of the date and authority of Aquinas*, into a 
certainty, claiming submission from the faith of Christendom on 
nothing less than a Divine authority. There is then no real rea- 
son for the statement that those who now reject the Immaculate 
Conception would of old have rejected the Homoousion. There 
is nothing to shew that those who bow with implicit faith before 
the Nicene decision are bound, as a matter of consistency, to 
yield the same deference of heart and thought to the most 
modern development of doctrine within the Latin portion of 
Catholic Christendom. 

(8) But it may be rejoined: ‘Why was a fresh definition 
. deemed needful at Niczea at all? Why could not the Church of 
the Nicene age have contented herself with saying that Jesus 
Christ is God, after the manner of the Church of earlier. days? 
Why was the thought of Christendom to be saddled with a 
metaphysical symbol which at least transcends, if it does not 
destroy, the simplicity of the Church’s first faith in our Lord’s 
Divinity Ὁ 

(1) Now the answer is simply as follows. In the Arian age 
it was not enough to say that Jesus Christ is God, because the 
Arians had contrived to impoverish and degrade the idea con- 
veyed by the Name of God so completely as to apply that sacred 
word to a creaturey. Of course, if it had been deemed a matter 
of sheer indifference whether Jesus Christ is or is not God, it 
would have been a practical error to have insisted on the truth 
of His real Divinity, and an equivocal expression might have 
been allowed to stand. If the Church of Christ had been, not 
the school of revealed truth, in which the soul was to make 
knowledge the food and stimulant of love, but a world-wide de- 
bating club, ‘ever seeking and never coming to the knowledge 
of the truth,’ it would then have been desirable to keep this and 
all other fundamental questions open. Perhaps in that case 


x Sum. Th. iii. a. 27, q. 2: ‘B. Virgo contraxit quidem originale peccatum, 
sed ab eo fuit mundata antequam ex utero nasceretur.’ Cf. St. Bernard. Ep. 
174; Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, vii. 7. 4; St. Bonaventur. 
Sent. iii. Dist. 3, pars i. art. 1. queest. 2. 

y In the same way modern Socinians ‘ believe in the Divinity of Christ.’ 
Channing, Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered, Works, vol. ii. p. 
361. Yet they also believe that Christ ‘is a Being distinct from the one 
God.’ Ibid. p. 510. Such a confession of Christ’s ‘Divinity’ implies of course 
no more than might be said of St. John, and shews how completely language 
may be emptied of its original value. 

z See the letter addressed in Constantine’s name to St. Alexander and to 


[ LECT. 


Vital «mportance of the question at tssue. 435 


the Nicene decision might with truth have been described as the 
‘ ereatest misfortune that has happened to Christendom.’ But 
the Church believed herself to possess a revelation from God, 
essential to the eternal well-being of the soul of man. She 
further believed that the true Godhead of Jesus Christ was a 
clearly-revealed truth of such fundamental and capital import, 
that, divorced from it, the creed of Christendom must perish 
outright. Plainly therefore it was the Church’s duty to assert 
this truth in such language as might be unmistakably expressive 
of it. Now this result was secured by the Homoousion. It 
was at the time of its first imposition, and it has been ever since, 
a perfect criterion of real belief in the Godhead of our Lord. It 
excluded the Arian sense of the word God, and on this account 
it was adopted by the orthodox. How much it meant was 
proved by the resistance which it then encountered, and by the 
subsequent efforts which have been made to destroy or to evade 
it. The sneer of Gibbon about the iota which separates the 
semi-Arian from the Catholic symbol (Homoiousion from Homo- 
ousion) is naturally repeated by those who believe that nothing 
was really at stake beyond the emptiest of abstractions, and who 
can speak of the fourth century as an age of meaningless logo- 
machies. But to men who ‘are concerned, not with words, but 
with the truths which they enshrine, not with the mere historic 
setting of a great struggle, but with the vital question at issue 
in it, the full importance of the Nicene symbol will be sufficiently 
obvious. The difference between Homoiousion and Homoousion 
convulsed the world for the simple reason, that in that difference 
lay the whole question of the real truth or falsehood of our 
Lord’s actual Divinity. If in His Essence He was only like God, 
He was still a distinct Being from God, and therefore either 
created, or (per impossibile) a second God. In a great engage- 
ment, when man after man is laid low in defence of the colours 
of his regiment, it might seem to a bystander, unacquainted with 
the forms of war, a prodigious absurdity that so great a sacrifice 
of life should be incurred for a piece of silk or cotton of a parti- 
cular hue; and he might make many caustic epigrams at the 
expense of the struggling and suffering combatants. But a 
soldier would tell him that the flag is a symbol of the honour 
and prowess of his country ; and that he is not dying for a few 


Arius (Soc. i. 7), in which the writer—probably Eusebius of Nicomedia— 
insists ‘that the points at issue are minute and trivial.’ Bright’s Hist. Ch. 
p. 20. Neale, Hist. Alex. 1. 134. 

vil | Ff2 


436 St. Athanasius a man of realities not of words. 


yards of coloured material, but for the moral and patriotic idea 
which the material represents. If ever there was a man who 
was not the slave of language, who had his eye upon ideas, 
truths, facts, and, who made language submissively do their 
work, that man was the great St. Athanasius. He advocated 
the Homoousion at Nicza, because he was convinced that it was 
the sufficient and necessary symbol and safeguard of the treasure 
of truth committed to the Church: but years afterwards, he 
declined to press it upon such of the semi-Arians as he knew to 
be at heart sincerely loyal to the truth which it protected ἃ, 
And during a period of fifteen centuries experience has not 
shewn that any large number of real believers in our Saviour’s 
Godhead have objected to the Nicene statement; while its 
efficacy in guarding against a lapse into Arian error has amply 
confirmed the far-sighted wisdom, which, full of jealousy for the 
rightful honour of Jesus», and of charity for the souls of men, 
has incorporated it for ever with the most authoritative profes- 
sion of faith in the Divinity of Christ which is possessed by 
Christendom. 

(2) It may indeed be urged that freedom from creeds is 
ideally and in the abstract the highest state of Christian com- 
munion. It may be pleaded that a public confession of. faith 
will produce in half-earnest and superficial souls a formal and 
mechanical devotion; that the exposure of the most sacred 
truth in a few condensed expressions to the scepticism and 
irreverence of those who are strangers to its essence will lead to 
inevitable ribaldry and scandal. But it is sufficient to reply 
that these liabilities do not outweigh the necessity for a clear 
‘form of sound words,’ since formalists will be formal, and 
sceptics will be irreverent, with or without,it. And those who 
depreciate creeds among us now, do not really mean to recom- 
mend that truth should be kept hidden, as in the first centuries, 
in the secret mind of the Church: they have far other purposes 


@ De Synod. 41: Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἀποδεχομένους τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα τῶν ἐν 
Νικαίᾳ γραφέντων, περὶ δὲ μόνον τὸ .“Ομοούσιον ἀμφιβάλλοντας, χρὴ μὴ ὡς 


πρὸς ἐχθροὺς διακεῖσθαι ... .. ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἀδελφοὶ πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς διαλεγόμεθα, τὴν 
αὐτὴν μὲν ἡμῖν διάνοιαν ἔχοντας, περὶ δὲ τὸ ὄνομα μόνον διστάζοντας.. .. . Οὐ 


μακράν εἶσιν ἀποδέξασθαι καὶ τὴν τοῦ “Ομοουσίου λέξιν. He repeatedly declares 
that the Homoousion in its Nicene sense is intended to guard the reality 
of the Divine Sonship as being uncreated. Ibid. 39, 45, 48, 54. 

b St. Athanasius’ ‘zeal for the Consubstantiality had its root in his loyalty 
to the ConsuBSTANTIAL. He felt that in the Nicene dogma were involved 
the worship of Christ and the life of Christianity.’ Bright’s Hist. Ch. 
Pp. 149. 
[ LECT. 


Value of Creeds at the present day. 437 


in view. Rousseau might draw pictures of the superiority of 
simple primitive savage life to the enervated civilization of 
Paris ; but it would not have been prudent in the Parisians at 
the end of the last century to have attempted a return to the 
barbaric life of their ancestors, who had roamed as happy 
savages in the great forests of Europe. The Latitudinarians 
who suggest that the Church might dispense with the Catholic 
_ereeds, advise us to revert to the defencelessness of ecclesiastical 
childhood. But, alas! they cannot guarantee to us its innocence, 
or its immunities. We could not, if we would, reverse the 
thought of centuries, and ignore the questions which heresy has 
opened, and which have been cecumenically decided. We might 
not thus do despite to the kindly providence of Him, Who, with 
the temptations to faith that. came with the predestined course 
of history, has in the creeds opened to us such ‘a way to escape 
that we may be able to bear them.’ 

Certainly if toil and suffering confer a value on the object 
which they earn or preserve ; if a country prizes the liberties 
which were baptized in the blood of her citizens; if a man 
rejoices in the honour which he has kept unstained at the risk 
of life; then we, who are the heirs of the ages of Christendom, 
should cling with a peculiar loyalty and love to the great Nicene 
confession of our Lord’s Divinity. For the Nicene definition 
was wrung from the heart of the agonized Church by a denial of 
the truth on which was fed, then as now, her inmost life. In 
the Arian heresy the old enemies of the Gospel converged as for 
a final and desperate effort to achieve its destruction. The 
carnal, gross, external, Judaizing spirit, embodied in the frigid 
literalism of the school of Antioch ; the Alexandrian dialectics, 
substituting philosophical placita for truths of faith; nay, 
Paganism itself, vanquished in the open field, but anxious to 
take the life of its conqueror by private assassination ;—these 
were the forces which reappeared in Arianism°¢. It was no mere 
exasperation of rhetoric which saw Porphyry in Arius, and 
which compared Constantius to Diocletian. The life of Athana- 
sius after the Nicene Council might well have been lived before 
the Edict of Milan. Arianism was a political force ; it ruled at 


© St. Greg. Nyssa, contr. Eunom. xii. p. 728. Arianism is 7 τῆς ᾿Ιουδαϊκῆς 
ἀπάτης συνήγορος, ἐχουσά τι Καὶ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς ἀθεΐας. So St. Gregory 
Nazianz. (Orat. i. vol. i. p. 16) describes the Arian conception of the Divine 
Nature as marked by an ᾿Ιουδαϊκὴ πενία, meaning the hard abstract mono- 
theism of the later Jewish creed. Quoted by Baur, Lehre von der Dreieinig- 
keit. i. pp. 352, 353, note. 
vil | 


438 Especial claims of the Nicene Creed. 6. 


court. Arianism was a philosophical disputant, and was at 
home in the schools. Arianism was, moreover, a proselytizer ; 
it had verses and epigrammatic arguments for the masses of 
the people ; and St. Gregory of Nyssa, in a passage 4 which is 
classical, has described its extraordinary success among the 
lower orders. Never was a heresy stronger, more versatile, 
more endowed with all the apparatus of controversy, more sure, 
as it might have seemed, of the future of the world. It was a 
long, desperate struggle, by which the original faith of Christ 
conquered this fierce and hardy antagonist. At this day the 
Creed of Niceea is, the living proof of the Church’s victory ®; and 
as we confess it we should, methinks, feel somewhat of the fire 
of our spiritual ancestors, some measure of that fresh glow of 
thankfulness, which is due to God after a great deliverance, 
although wrought out in a distant age. To unbelief this creed 
may be only an ecclesiastical ‘ test,’ only an additional ‘incubus’ 
weighing down ‘ honest religious thought.’ But to the children 
of faith, the Nicene confession must ever furnish the welcome 
expression of their most cherished conviction. - Let us: hence- 
forth repeat it, at those most solemn moments when the Church 
puts it into our mouths, with a renewed and deepened sense of 
gratitude and joy. Not as if it were the mere trophy of a con- 
troversial victory, or the dry embodiment of an abstract truth 
in the language of speculation, should we welcome this glorious 


ἃ See Dr. Newman’s translation of it in Athan. Treatises, i. 213, note a: 
‘Men of yesterday and the day before, mere mechanics, off-hand dogmatists 
in theology, servants too, and slaves that have been flogged....... 
are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible... Ask 
about pence, and he will discuss the Generate and Ingenerate; inquire 
the price of bread, he answers, ‘‘ Greater is the Father, and the Son is sub- 
ject;”? say that a bath would suit you, and he defines that the Son is out 
of nothing.’ See also St. Athan. Orat. Ari. i. 22, on the profane questions 
put to boys and women:-in the Agora; and Ibid. 4 sqq. on the ‘ Thalia’ of 
Arius. 

€ The stress here laid upon the Nicene Creed will not be supposed to 
imply forgetfulness of the great claims, in its due place, of the symbol 
Quicunque. Coleridge, indeed, has said that the Athanasian Creed is, in his 
judgment, ‘heretical in the omission or implicit denial of the Filial subordina- 
tion in the Godhead, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed.’ (Table-Talk, 
p- 41.) But when the Athanasian Creed asserts that the Son is ‘of the 
Father,’ it virtually affirms the Subordination; and when the Nicene Creed 
calls the Son ‘ Very God’ and ‘Consubstantial,’ it emphatically confesses the 
Coequality. Coleridge’s judgment can only be sustained by supposing that 
‘he Nicene Creed teaches a doctrine of Subordination in which the Nicene 
Council would assuredly have detected Arianism, See Bright, Sermons of St. 
Leo, note, 99. 

[ LECT. 


Especial claims of the Nicene Creed. 439 


- _ ereed to our hearts.and lips. Rather let us greet it, as the 
intellectual sentinel which guards the shrine of faith in our in- 
most souls from the profanation of error; as the good angel 
who warns us that since the Incarnation we move in the very 
ante-chamber of a Divine Presence; as a mother’s voice re- 
minding us of that tribute of heartfelt love and adoration, 
which is due from all serious Christians to the Lord Jesus 
Christ our Saviour and our God. 


LECTURE VIIL 


SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE DOCTRINE OF OUR 
LORD’S DIVINITY. 


He That spared not His Own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how 
shall He not with Him also freely give us all things ?—Rom. viii. 32. 


Or late years we have been familiarized with cautions and 
protests against what has been termed by way of disparagement 
‘Inferential Theology.’ And no one would «deny that in all 
ages of the Church, the field of theology has been the scene of 
hasty, unwarrantable, and misleading inferences. False con- 
clusions have been drawn from true premisses ; and very doubt- 
ful or false premisses have been occasionally assumed if not 
asserted to be true. Moreover, some earnest believers have 
seemed to forget that in a subject-matter such as. the creed of 
Christendom, they are confessedly below truth and not above it. 
They have forgotten that it is given us here to see a part only, 
and not the whole. In reality we can but note the outskirts of 
a vast economy, whose body and substance stretch far away from 
our gaze into infinitude. Many an intercepting truth, not the 
less true because unseen and unsuspected, ought to arrest the 
hardy and confident logic, which insists upon this or that 
particular conclusion as following necessarily upon these or 
those premisses of which it is already in possession. But this 
caution has not always been kept in view. And when once 
pious affection or devout imagination have seized the reins of 
religious thought, it is easy for individuals or schools to wander 
far from the beaten paths of a clear yet sober faith, into some 
theological wonderland, the airiest creation of the liveliest fancy, 
where, to the confusion and unsettlement of souls, the wildest 
fiction and the highest truth may be inextricably intertwined in 
an entanglement of hopeless and bewildering disorder. 

| LECT. 


‘Lnferential’ Theology. 441 


But. if this should be admitted, it would not follow that 
theology is in no sense ‘inferential.’ Within certain limits, and 
under due guidance, ‘inference’ is the movement, it is the life of 
theology. The primal records of revelation itself, as we find 
them in Scripture, are continually inferential ; and it is at least 
the business of theology to observe and marshal these revealed 
inferences, to draw them out, and to make the most of them. 
The illuminated reason of the collective Church has for ages 
been engaged in studying the original materials of the Christian 
revelation. It thus has shaped, rather than created, the science 
of theology. ‘What is theology, but a continuous series of ob- 
served and systematized inferences, respecting God in His 
Nature and His dealings with mankind, drawn from premisses 


which rest upon God’s authority? Do you say that no ‘in- 


ference’ is under any circumstances legitimate; that no one 
truth in theology necessarily implies another ; that the Christian 
mind ought to preserve in a jealous and sterile isolation each 
proposition that can be extracted from Scripture? Do you 
suppose that the several truths of the Christian creed are so 
many separate, unfruitful, unsuggestive dogmas, having no 
traceable relations towards each other? Do you take it for 
granted that each revealed truth involves nothing that is not 
seen plainly to lie on the very surface of the terms which 
express it? Do you, in your inmost thought, regard the doc- 
trines of the Church as so many barren abstractions, which a 
merely human speculation on divine things has from age to age 
drawn out into form and system? If so, of course it is natural 
that you should deprecate any earnest scrutiny of the worth and 
consequences of these abstractions; you deprecate it as in- 
terfering with moral and practical interests; you deem an 
inferential theology alike illusory and mischievous. If here I 
touch the bottom of your thought, at least, my brethren, I admit 
its consistency ; but then your original premiss is of a character 
to put you out of all relations with the Christian Church, except 
those of fundamental opposition. The Christian Church believes 
that God has really spoken; and she assumes that no subject 
can have a higher practical interest for man than a consideration 
of the worth and drift of what He has said. Of course no one 
would waste his time upon systematizing what he believed to be 
only a series of abstract phantoms. And if a man holds a doc- 
trine with so slight and doubtful a grasp that it illuminates 
nothing within him, that it moves nothing, that it leads on to 
iy beyond itself, he is in a fair way to forfeit it altogether. 
VIII 


442 What does faith in Christ's Divinity tnvolve? 


We scan anxiously and cross-question keenly only that which we 
really possess and cherish as solid truth: a living faith is pretty 
certain to draw inferences. ‘The seed which has not shrivelled 
up into an empty husk cannot but sprout, if you place it beneath 
the sod ; the living belief, which has really been implanted in 
the soil of thought and feeling, cannot but bear its proper flower 
and fruit in the moral and intellectual life of a thoughtful and 
earnest man. -If you would arrest the growth of the seed, you 
must cut it off from contact with the soil, and so in time you 
must kill it: you may, for awhile, isolate a religious conviction 
by some violent moral or intellectual process ; but be sure that 
the conviction which cannot germinate in your heart and mind 
is already condemned to death@. 

If theology is inferential, she infers under guidance and within 
restricted limits. If the eccentric reasonings of individual minds 
are to be received with distrust, the consent of many minds, of 
many ages, of many schools and orders of thought, may com- 
mand at least a respectful attention. If we reject conclusions 
drawn professedly from the substance of revelation, but really 
enlarging instead of explaining it, it does not follow that we 
should reject inferences which are simply explanatory, or which 
exhibit the bearing of one revealed truth upon another. This 
indeed is the most fruitful and legitimate province of inference 
in theological enquiry. Such ‘inference’ brings out the meaning 
of the details of revelation. It raises this feature to pro- 
minence ; it throws that into the shade. It places language to 
which a too servile literalism might have attributed the highest 
force, in the lower rank of metaphor and symbol; it elicits 
pregnant and momentous truths from incidents which, in the 
absence of sufficient guidance or reflection, may have been 
thought to possess only a secondary degree of significance. 

To-day we reach the term of those narrow limits within which — 
some aspects of a subject in itself exhaustless have been so 
briefly and imperfectly discussed. And it is natural for any 
earnest man to ask himself —‘If I believe in Christ’s Divinity, 
what does this belief involve? Is it possible that such a faith 
can be for me a dead abstraction, having no real influence upon 
my daily life of thought and action? If this great doctrine be 
true, is there not, when I am satisfied of its truth, still some- 
thing to be done besides proving it? Can it be other than a, 


See, on this point, University Sermons, by Rev. R. Scott, D.D., Master 
of Balliol College, pp. 174-176. The rejection of ‘inferential theology’ was 
a characteristic feature of Sadduceeism. 


[ LECT. 


γ yuitfulness of the Doctrine of Christ's Divinity. 443 


practical folly, to have ascertained the truth that Jesus is God, 
and then to consign so momentous a conclusion to a respectful 
oblivion in some obscure corner of my mind, as if it were a well- 
bound but disused book that could only ornament the shelves of 
a library? Must I not rather enshrine it in the very centre of 
my soul’s life? Must I not contemplate it, nay, if it may be,- 
penetrate it, feed on it by repeated contemplation, that it may 
illuminate, sustain, transfigure my whole inward being? Must 
I not be reasonably anxious till this great conviction shall have 
moulded all that it can bear on, or that can bear on it—all that 
I hold in any degree for religious truth? Must not such a faith 
at last radiate through my every thought? Must it not in- 


vigorate with a new and deeper motive my every action? If 


Jesus, Who lived and died and rose for me, be indeed God, can 
my duties to Him end with a bare confession of His Divinity? 
Will not the greatness of His Life and of His Death, will not 
the binding force of His commands, will not the nature and 
reality of His promises and gifts, be felt to have a new and 
deeper meaning, when I survey them in the light of this glo- 
rious truth? Must not all which the Divine Christ blesses and 
sanctions have in some sense about it, the glory and virtue of 
His Divinity 1 

Undoubtedly, brethren, the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead is, 
both in the sphere of belief and in that of morals, as fruitful and 
as imperious as you anticipate. St. Paul’s question in the text 
is in substantial harmony with the spirit of your own. St. Paul 
makes the doctrine of a Divine Christ, given for the sins of men 
to a Life of humiliation and to a Death of anguish, the premiss 
of the largest consequences, the warrant of the most unbounded 
expectations. ‘He That spared not His Own Son, but gave 
Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give 
us all things?’ Let us then hasten to trace this somewhat in 
detail ; and let us remark, in passing, that on the present oc- 
casion we shall not be leaving altogether the track of former 
lectures. Tor in studying the results of a given belief, we may 
add to the number of practical evidences in its favour ; we may 
approach the belief itself under conditions which are more fa- 


-vourable for doing justice to it than those which a direct 


argument supplies. To contemplate such a truth as the God- 
head of our Lord in itself, is like gazing with open eyelids at 
the torturing splendour of the noon-day sun. We can best 
admire the sun of the natural heavens when we take note of the 
beauty which he sheds over the face of the world, when we mark 
vill | 


444 Lhe doctrine protects Theistic truth. 


the floods of light which stream from him, and the deep 
shadows which he casts, and the colours and forms which he 
lights up and displays before us. In like manner, perchance, 
we may most truly enter into the meaning of the Divinity of the. 
Sun of Righteousness, by observing the truths which depend 
more or less directly on that glorious doctrine,—truths on which 
it sheds a significance so profound, so unspeakably awful, so un- 
speakably consoling. 

There are three distinct bearings of the doctrine of our Lord’s 
Divinity which it is more especially of importance to consider. 
This doctrine protects truths prior to itself, and belonging both 
to natural and to revealed theology. It also illuminates the 
meaning, it asserts the force of truths which depend upon itself, 
which are, to speak humanly, below it, and which can only be - 
duly appreciated when they are referred to it as justifying and 
explaining them. Lastly, it fertilizes the Christian’s moral and 
spiritual life, by supplying a motive to the virtues which are 
most characteristically Christian, and without which Christian 
ethics sink down to the level of Pagan morality. 

I. Observe, first, the conservative force of the doctrine. It 
protects the truths which it presupposes. Placed at the centre 
of the faith of Christendom, it looks backward as well as 
forward ; it guards in Christian thought the due apprehension 
of those fundamental verities without which no religion what- 
ever is possible, since they are the postulates of all religious 
thought and activity. 

1. What, let us ask, is the practical relation of the doctrine 
before us to the primal truth that a Personal God really exists ? - 

Both in the last century and in our own day, it has been the 
constant aim of a philosophical Deism to convince the world 
that the existence of a Supreme Being would be more vividly, 
constantly, practically realized, if the dogma of His existence 
were detached from the creed of Christendom. The pure 
Theistic idea, we are told, if it were only freed from the earthly 
and material accessories of an Incarnation, if it were not em- 
barrassed by the ‘metaphysical conception’ of distinct personal 
Subsistencies within the Godhead, if it could be left to its native 
force, to its spirituality of essence, to its simplicity of form,— 
would exert a prodigious influence on human thought, if not on 
human conduct. This influence is said to be practically im- 
possible, so long as Theistic truth is overlaid by the ‘thick 
integument’ of Christian doctrine. Accordingly a real belief in © 
God is to be deepened and extended, and atheism is be 

LECT. 


Re 
Ga ae 


The idea of Gon not really guarded by Deism. 445 


‘expelled from the minds of men, by the destruction of dogmatic 


Christianity. But has any such anticipation as yet been realized 
by Deism? Is it in the way to be realized at this hour? Need I 
remind you, that throughout Europe, the most earnest assaults of 
infidelity upon the Christian creed within the last ten years 
have been directed against its Zhevstic, as distinct from its 
peculiarly Christian elements? When the possibility of miracle 
is derided ; when a Providence is scouted as the fond dream of 
man’s exaggerated self-love ; when belief in the power of prayer 
is treated as a crude superstition, illustrative of man’s ignorance 
of the scientific conception of law; when the hypothesis of 
absolutely invariable law, and the cognate conception of nature 
as a self-evolved system of self-existent forces and self-existent 
matter, are advancing with giant strides in large departments of 
the literature of the day ;—it is not Christianity as such, it is 
Theism, which is really jeopardized and insulted. Among the 


forces arrayed against Christianity at this hour, the most for- 


midable, because the most consistent and the most sanguine, 
is that pure materialism, which has been intellectually or- 
ganized in the somewhat pedantic form of Positivism. ‘To the 
Positivist the most etherealized of deistic theories is just as 
much an object. of pitying scorn as the creed of a St. John and a 
St. Athanasius. Both are relegated to ‘the theological period’ 
of human development. And if we may judge from the present 


aspect of the controversy between non-Christian spiritualists and 


the apostles of Positivism, it must be sorrowfully acknowledged 
that the latter appear to gain steadily and surely on their op- 
ponents. This fact is more evident on the continent of Europe 
than in our own country. It cannot be explained by supposing 
that the spiritualistic writers are intellectually inferior to the 
advocates of materialism. Still less is an explanation to be. 
sought in the intrinsic indefensibility of the truth which the 
spiritualists defend; it is really furnished by the conditions 
under which they undertake to defend it. A living, energetic, 
robust faith, a faith, as it has been termed, not of ether, but of 
flesh and blood, is surely needed, in order to stand the reiterated 


attacks, the subtle and penetrating misgivings, the manifold 


wear and tear of a protracted controversy with so brutal an 
antagonist. Can Deism inspire this faith? The pretension of 
deists to refine, to spiritualize, to etherealize the idea of God 
almost indefinitely, is fatal to the living energy of their one con- 
viction. Where an abstract deism is not killed out by the 
violence of atheistic materialism, it is apt, although left to itself, 
Vill | 


446 True tdea of Gon, which Deism cannot guard, 


to die by an unperceived process of evaporation. For a living 
faith in a Supreme Being, the human mind requires motives, 
corollaries, consequences, supports. These are not supplied by 
the few abstract considerations which are entertained by the 
philosophical deists. Whatever may be the intellectual strength 
of their position against atheism, the practical weakness of that 
position is a matter of notoriety ; and if this weakness is ap- 
parent in the case of the philosophers themselves, how much 
more patent is it when deism attempts to make itself a home in 
the heart of the people! That abstract and inaccessible being 
who is placed at the summit of deistic systems is too subtle for 
the thought and too cold for the heart of the multitudes of the 
human family. When God is regarded less as the personal 
Object of affection and worship than as the necessary term of an - 
intellectual equation, the sentiment of piety is not really satis- 
fied ; it hungers, it languishes, it dies. And this purely in- 
tellectual manner of apprehending God, which kills piety, is so 
predominant in every genuine deistic system as to bring about, 
in no long lapse of time, its impotence and extinction as a 
popular religious force. The Supreme Agent, without whom 
the deist cannot construct an adequate or satisfactory theory of 
being, is gradually divested of all personal characteristics, and is 
resolved into a formula expressing only supreme agency. His 
moral perfections fall into the background of thought, while he 
is conceived of, more and more exclusively, as the Universal 
Mind. And his intellectual attributes are in turn discarded, 
when for the Supreme Mind is substituted the conception of the 
Mightiest Force. Long before this point is reached, deistic phi- 
losophy is nervously alarmed, lest its God should still be sup- 
posed to penetrate as a living Providence down into this human 
world of suffering aud sin. Accordingly, professing much 
anxiety for his true dignity and repose, deism weaves around 
his liberty a network of imaginary law ; and if he has not been 
previously destroyed by the materialistic controversialists, he 15 
at length conducted by the cold respect of deistic thinkers to the 
utmost frontier of the conceivable universe, where, having been 
enthroned in a majestic inaction, he is as respectfully abandoned. 
As suggesting a problem which may rouse a faint spasmodic in- 
tellectual interest, his name may still be mentioned from time to 
time in the world of letters. But the interest which he creates 
is at the best on a level with that of the question whether the 
planets are or are not inhabited. As an energetic, life-controlling, 
life-absorbing power, the God of Deism is extinct. ΣΥ͂Σ 

LECT, 


protected by farth tn the Divine Incarnation. 447 


Now the doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth is the Incarnate 
God protects this primal theistic truth which non-Christian 
deism is so incapable of popularizing, and even of retaining. 
The Incarnation bridges over the abyss which opens in our 
thought between earth and heaven; it brings the Almighty, 
Allwise, Illimitable Being down to the mind and heart of His 
reasonable creatures. The Word made Flesh is God con- 
descending to our finite capacities ; and this condescension has 
issued in a clear, strong sense of the Being and Attributes of 
God, such as is not found beyond the bounds of Christendom. 
The last prayer of Jesus, that His redeemed might know the 
only true God, has been answered in history. How profound, 
how varied, how fertile is the idea of God, of His Nature and of 
His attributes, in St. John, in St. Paul, in St.Gregory Nazianzen, 
in St. Augustine! How energetic is this idea, how totally is it 
removed from the character of an impotent speculation! How 
does this keen, strong sense of God’s present and majestic Life 
leave its mark upon manners, literatures, codes of law, national 
institutions, national characters ! How utterly does its range of 
energy transcend any mere employment of the intellect; how 
does it, again and again, bend wills, and soften hearts, and change 
the current and drift of lives, and transfigure the souls of men! 
And why is this? It is because the Incarnation rivets the 
apprehension of God on the thought and heart of the Church, 
so that within the Church theistic truth bids defiance to those 
influences which tend perpetually to sap or to volatilize it else- 
where. Instead of presenting us with some fugitive abstraction, 
inaccessible to the intellect and disappointing to the heart, the 
Incarnation points to Jesus. Jesus is the Almighty, restraining 
His illimitable powers; Jesus is the Incomprehensible, volun- 
tarily submitting to bonds ; Jesus is Providence, clothed in our 
own flesh and blood ; J esus is the Infinite Charity, tending us 
with the kindly looks and tender handling of a human love ; 
Jesus is the Eternal Wisdom, speaking out of the depths of 
infinite thought in a human language. Jesus is God making 
Himself, if I: may dare so to speak, our tangible possession ; He 
is God brought ‘ very nigh to us, in our mouth and in our heart Ἢ 
we behold Him, we touch Him, we cling to Him, and lo! we 
are θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως", partakers of the Nature of Deity, 
through our actual membership in His. Body, in His Flesh, and 
in His Bones*; we dwell, if we will, evermore in Him, and He 
in us, 


b 2 St. Pet. iv 4. ¢ Eph. v. 30, 
VIII | 


ae) 


448 Lhe doctrine a safeguard against Pantheism. 


This then is the result of the Divine Incarnation: it brings 
God close to the inmost being of man, yet without forfeiting, 
nay, rather while guarding most carefully, in man’s thought, the 
spirituality of the Divine Essence. Nowhere is the popular 
idea of God more refined, more spiritual, than where faith in 
the Divinity of Jesus is clearest and strongest. No writers 


have explained and asserted the immateriality, the simplicity, 


the indivisibility of the Essence of God more earnestly, than 
those who have most earnestly asserted and explained the 
doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Divine Incarnation. 
For if we know our happiness in Christ, we Christians are 
united to God, we possess God, we consciously live, and move, 
and have our being in God. Our intelligence and our heart 


alike apprehend God in His majestic and beautiful Life so truly — 


and constantly, because He has taken possession of our whole 
nature, intellectual, moral, and corporeal, and has warmed 
and illuminated and blessed it by the quickening Manhood 
of Jesus. We cannot reflect upon and rejoice in our union 
with Jesus, without finding ourselves face to face with the 
Being and Attributes of Him with Whom in Jesus we are made 
one. Holy Scripture has traced the failure and misery of all 
attempts on the part of a philosophical deism to create or to 
maintain in the soul of man a real communion with our 
heavenly Parent. ‘Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath 
not the Father4’ And the Christian’s practical security against 
those speculative difficulties to which his faith in a living God 
may be exposed, lies in that constant contemplation of and 
communion with Jesus, which is of the essence of the Christian 
life. ‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of 
the glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christé.’ 

2. But if belief in our Saviour’s Godhead protects Christian 
thought against the intellectual dangers which await an arid 
Deism, does it afford an equally effective safeguard against 
Pantheism? In conceiving of God, the choice before ἃ- pan- 
theist lies between alternatives from which no genius has as yet 
devised a real escape. God, the pantheist must assert, is 
literally everything ; God is the whole material and spiritual 
universe ; He is humanity in all its manifestations; He is by 
inclusion every moral and immoral agent ; and every form and 
exaggeration of moral evil, no less than every variety of moral 


ἃ x St. John ii. 23. © 2 Cor. iv. 6. 
LECT. 


The tdea of Gon destroyed by Pantheism. 449 


excellence and beauty, is part of the all-pervading, all-compre- 
hending movement of His Universal Life. If this revolting 
blasphemy be declined, then the God of pantheism must be the 
barest abstraction of abstract being; He must, as with the 
Alexandrian thinkers, be so exaggerated an abstraction as to 
transcend existence itself; He must be conceived of as utterly 
unreal, lifeless, non-existent ; while the only real beings are 
these finite and determinate forms of existence whereof ‘ nature’ 
is composed£ This dilemma haunts all the historical transform- 
ations of pantheism, in Europe as in the East, to-day as two 
thousand years ago. Pantheism must either assert that its God 
is the one only existing being whose existence absorbs and is 
identified with the universe and humanity; or else it must 
admit that he is the rarest and most unreal of conceivable ab- 
stractions ; in plain terms, that he is no being at all. And the 
question before us is, Does the Incarnation of God, as taught 
by the Christian doctrine, expose Christian thought to this 
- dilemma? Is God ‘brought very nigh to us’ Christians in 
such sort, as to bury the Eternal in the temporary, the Infinite 
in the finite, the Absolute and Self-existent in the transient and 
the relative, the All-holy in the very sink of moral evil, unless, 
in order to save His honour in our thought, we are prepared to 
attenuate our idea of Him into nonentity 1 

Now, not merely is there no ground for this apprehension ; 
but the Christian doctrine of an Incarnate God is our most solid 
protection against the inroads of pantheistic error. 

The strength of pantheistic systems lies in that craving both 
of the intellect and of the heart for union with the Absolute 
Being, which is the most legitimate and the noblest instinct of 
our nature. This craving is satisfied by the Christian’s union 
with the Incarnate Son. But while satisfying it, the Incar- 
nation raises an effective barrier against its abuse after the 
fashion of pantheism. Against the dogma of an Incarnate God, 
rooted in the faith of a Christian people, the waves of panthe- 
istic thought may surge and lash themselves and break in 
vain. for the Incarnation presupposes that master-truth which 
pantheism most passionately denies. It presupposes the truth 
that between the finite and the Infinite, between the Creator 
and the Cosmos, between God and man, there is of necessity a 
measureless abyss. On this point its opposition to pantheism 
is as earnest as that of the most jealous deism; but the 


f Saisset, Philosophie Religieuse, i. 181; ii. 368. 
Vill | Gg 


450Christ's Divinity thesafeguardagainstPantheism. 


Christian creed escapes from the deistic conception of an omni- 
potent moral being, surveying intelligently the vast accumu- 
lation of sin and misery which we see on this earth, yet withal 
remaining unmoved, inactive, indifferent. The Christian creed 
spans this gulf which yawns between earth and heaven, by pro- 
claiming that the Everlasting Son has taken our nature upon 
Him. In His Person a Created Nature is joined to the 
Uncreated, by a union which is for ever indissoluble. But 
what is that truth which underlies this transcendent mystery ? 
What sustains it, what even enhances it, what forbids it to melt 
away in our thought into a chaotic confusion out of which nei- 
ther the Divine nor the Human could struggle forth into the 
light for distinct recognition? It is, I reply, the truth that the 
Natures thus united in the Person of Jesus are radically, by - 
their essence, and for ever, distinct. It is by reason of this 
ineffaceable distinctness that the union of the Godhead and 
Manhood in Jesus is such an object of wondering and thankful 
contemplation to Christians. Accordingly, at the very heart of 
the creed of Christendom, we have a guarantee against the 
cardinal error of pantheism ; while yet by our living fellowship 
as Christians with the Divine and Incarnate Son, we realize the 
aspiration which pantheism both fosters and perverts. Chris- 
tian intellect, so long as it is Christian, can never be betrayed 
into the admission that God is the universe ; Christian faith 
can never be reduced to the extremity of choosing between a 
denial of moral distinctions and an assertion that God is the 
parent of all immoral action, or to the desperate endeavour to 
escape this alternative by volatilizing God into non-existence. 
And yet Christian love, while it is really Christian, cannot for 
one moment doubt that it enfolds and possesses and is united to 
its Divine Object. But this intellectual safeguard and this 
moral satisfaction alike vanish, if the real Deity of Jesus be 
denied or obscured: since it is the Deity of our truly human 
Lord which satisfies the Christian heart, while it protects the 
Christian intellect against fatal aberrations. Certainly a deism 
which would satisfy the heart, inevitably becomes pantheistic 
in its awkward attempts to become devotional ; and although 
pantheism should everywhere breathe the tenderness which 
almost blinds a reader of Spinosa’s ethics to a perception of 
their real character, still pantheism is at bottom and in its 
results not other than a graceful atheism. But to partake of 
the Divine Nature incarnate in Christ is not to bury God in the 
filth of moral pollution, nor is it to transcendentalize ἢ into 

LECT, 


ς-τ lai κε 


Christ’s Divinity guards man’s true dignity. 45% 


an abstraction, which mocks us, when we attempt to grasp it, as 
an unsubstantial phantom. 

3. One more sample shall be given of this protective efficacy 
of the doctrine before us. If it guards in our thought the 
honour, the majesty, the Life of God, it also protects the true 
dignity and the rights of man. The unsettled spirit of our 
time, when it has broken with the claims of faith, oscillates, 
whether from caprice or in bewilderment, between the most 
inconsistent errors. If at one while its audacity would drive 
the Great God from His throne in heaven to make way for the 
lawless intellect and will of His creature, at another it seems 
possessed by an infatuated passion for the degradation of man- 
kind. It either ignores such features of the higher side of our 
complex being as are the powers of reflection and of mference, 
or it arbitrarily assumes that they are only the products of 
civilization. It fixes its attention exclusively upon the gradu- 
ated variety of form perceptible in a long series of crania which 
it has arranged in its museum, and then it proclaims with 
enthusiasm that a Newton or a Herschel is after all only the 
cultivated descendant of a grotesque and irrational ape. It even 
denies to man the possession of any spiritual nature whatever ; 
thought is asserted to be inherent in the substance of the brain ; 
belief in the existence of an immaterial essence is treated as an 
unscientific and superstitious prejudice ; virtuous and vicious 
actions are alluded to as alike results of purely physical agen- 
ciesh; man is to all intents and purposes a soulless brute. My 
brethren, you will not suppose that I am desiring to derogate, 
however indirectly, from the claims of that noble science which 
patiently investigates the physiology of our animal nature; 1 
am only protesting against a rash and imsulting hypothesis, for 
which science, if her sons could speak with one voice, would be 
loath to make herself responsible, since by it her true utterances 


& M. Renan’s frequent mention of ‘God’ in his ‘ Vie de Jésus’ does not 
imply that he believes in a Supreme Being. ‘ God’ means with M. Renan 
only ‘the category of the ideal,’ and not any existing personal being whatever. 
Questions contemporaines, p. 224: ‘ Les sciences historiques ne différent en 
rien par la méthode des sciences physiques et mathématiques: elles sup- 
posent qu’aucun agent surnaturel ne vient troubler la marche de l’humanité 3 
que cette marche est la résultante immédiate de la liberté qui est dans 
Vhomme et de la fatalité qui est dans la nature; qu’il n’y a pas d’étre libre 
supérieur & homme auquel on puisse attribuer une part appréciable dans la 
conduite morale, non plus que dans la conduite matérielle de univers.’ 

h Cf. M. Taine, Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, Introduction, p. XV3" 


‘Le vice et la vertu sont des produits comme le sucre et le vitriol.’ Κα 
γ117 Gg 2 GA? 4’ 
fy 9 
Hh) aX, 3 


452 Christ’s Divinity guards man’s true dignity. 


are piteously caricatured. It cannot be said that such a theory 
is a harmless eccentricity of over-eager speculation; for it 
destroys that high and legitimate estimate of God’s natural 
gifts to man which is an important element of earnest and 
healthy morality in the individual, and which is still more 
essential to the onward march of our social progress. 

But so long as the Christian Church believes in the true 
Divinity of our Incarnate Lord, it is not probable that theories 
which deny the higher aspects of human nature will meet with 
large acceptance. We Christians can bear to be told that the 
skull of this or that section of the human family bears this or 
that degree of resemblance to the skull of a gorilla. We know, 
indeed, that as receivers of the gift of life we are simply on a 
level with the lowest of the lower creatures ; we owe all that we ~ 
are and have to God. Do we not thank Him for our creation, 
preservation, and all the blessings of this life? Might He not 
have given us less than we have? Might He not have given us 
nothing? What have we, what are we, that we have not 
received? The question of man’s place in the universe touches 
not any self-achieved dignity of our own, but the extent and 
the nature of the Divine bounty. But while we believe the 
creed of Christendom, we cannot view such a question as open, 
or listen with any other feelings than those of sorrow and 
repugnance to the arguments of the apostles of human degrada- 
tion. We cannot consent to suppose ourselves to be mere 
animal organisms, without any immaterial soul or future des- 
tiny, parted by no distinctive attribute from the perishing beasts 
around us. For the true nobility of our nature has received the 
seal of a recognition, which forbids our intellectual complicity 
with the physics or the ‘psychology’ of materialism. Do not 
we Christians call to mind, often, every day of our lives, that 
God has put such high and distinctive honour upon our common 
humanity as to clothe Himself in it, and to bear it to heaven 
in its glorious and unsullied perfection, that for all eternity 
it may be the partner of His throne? 

Tremunt videntes angeli 
Versam vicem mortalium ; 
Peccat cara, mundat Caro, 
Regnat Deus Dei Caro. 

But this exaltation of our human nature would be the wildest 
dream, unless Jesus were truly God as well as Man. His 
Divinity is the warrant that in Him our race is ‘crowned with 
glory and honour,’ and that in taking upon Him ‘not the ee 

| LECT. 


δι hrist, as being Gon, ts infallible. 453 


of angels, but the seed of Abraham,’ He was vindicating our 
individual capacity for the highest greatness. Apart from the 
phenomena of reflection and reason, the hopes which are raised 
by the Incarnation utterly forbid speculations that would de- 
grade man to the level of a brute incapable of any real morality. 
If we are told that such hopes are not direct replies to the 
arguments of physiology ; we answer that physiology can and 
does often correct by her scientific demonstrations, the eccen- 
tricities of those who would force her to take part. against 
man’s best hopes and instincts. But, as a practical matter of 
fact, Christendom maintains its faith in the dignity of man 
amidst the creatures of God by its faith in the Incarnation of 
the Divine Son. ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, 
when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see 
Him as He isi’ 

II. These are but a few out of many illustrations of the 
protection afforded by the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity to sun- 
dry imperilled truths of natural religion. Let us proceed to 
consider the illuminative or explanatory relation in which the 
doctrine stands to truths which are internal to the Christian 
revelation, and which themselves presuppose some definite belief 
respecting the Person of Christ. 

Now our Lord’s whole Mediatorial work, while it is dis- 
charged through His assumed Humanity, is efficacious and 
complete, simply because the Mediator is not merely Man but 
God. As a Prophet, His utterances are infallible. As a Priest, 
He offers a prevailing sacrifice. As a King, He wields an autho- 
rity which has absolute claims upon the conscience, and ἃ power 
which will ultimately be proved to be resistless. 

(a) A sincere and intelligent belief in the Divinity of Jesus 
Christ obliges us to believe that Jesus Christ, as a Teacher, is 
infallible. His infallibility is not a gift, it is an original and 
necessary endowment of His higher Nature. If indeed Christ 
had been merely man, He might still have been endowed with 
an infallibility such as was that of His own apostles. As it is, 
to charge Him with error is to deny that He is God. Unless 
God’s wisdom can be foolishness, or His veracity can be sullied 
by the suspicion of deceit ; unless God can Himself succumb to 
error, or can consent to deceive His reasonable creatures; a 


- sincere believer in the true Divinity of Jesus Christ will bow 


before His words in all their possible range of significance, 


i 1 St. John iii. 2. 
vill ] 


454 Modern denial of our Lora’s Infallibility. 


as before the words of a literally infallible Master. So obvious 
an inference would only be disputed under circumstances of an 
essentially transitional character, such as are those which have 
perplexed the Church of England during the last few years. 
Deny that Jesus Christ is God, and you may or may not pro- 
ceed to deny that He is infallible. But confess His Godhead, 
and the common sense of men of the world will concur with the 
judgment of divines, in bidding you avoid the irrational as 
well as blasphemous conception of a fallible Deity. To main- 
tain, on the one hand, that Jesus Christ is God, and, on the 
other, that He is a teacher and propagator, not of trivial and 
unimportant, but of far-reaching and substantial errors ;—this 
would have appeared to ancient Christendom a paradox so sin- 
gular as to be absolutely incredible. But we have lived to hear 
men proclaim the legendary and immoral character of con- 
siderable portions of those Old Testament Scriptures, upon 
which our Lord has set the seal of His infallible authority, 
And yet, side by side with this rejection of Scriptures so 
deliberately sanctioned by Christ, there is an unwillingness 
which, illogical as it is, we must sincerely welcome, to profess 
any explicit rejection of the Church’s belief in Christ’s Divinity. 
Hence arises the endeavour to intercept a conclusion, which 
might otherwise have seemed so plain as to make arguments in 
its favour an intellectual impertinence. Hence a series of*sin- 
gular refinements, by which Christ is presented to the modern 
world as really Divine, yet as subject to fatal error ; as Founder 
of the true religion, yet as the credulous patron of a volume 
replete with worthless legends; as the highest Teacher and 
Leader of humanity, yet withal as the ignorant victim of the 
prejudices and follies of an unenlightened age. 

It will be urged by those who impugn the trustworthiness 
of the Pentateuch without denying in terms the Divinity of 
Christ, that such a representation as the foregoing does them a 
certain measure of injustice. They do not wish to deny that 


k Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. iii. p. 623: ‘[In Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10] we 
have quotations from Deut. viii. 3; vi. 16; vi. 13; x. 20. And it is well 
known that there are many other passages in the Gospels and Epistles, 
in which this book is referred to, and in some of which Moses is expressly 
mentioned as the writer of the words in question, 6. 95. Acts iii. 22; 
Rom. x. 19. And, though it is true that, in the texts above quoted, the 
words are not, indeed, ascribed to Moses, but are merely introduced with 
the phrase ‘It is written,’ yet in Matt. xix. 7 the Pharisees refer to a passage 
in Deut. xxiv. 1 as a law of Moses; and our Lord in His reply, v. 8, repeats 
their language, and practically adopts it as correct, and makes it His own.’ 

: [ LECT. 


τ ΣΝ 


Our Lord said to be fallibleas Man. 455 


Christ, as the Eternal Son of God, is infallible. But the Christ 
Who speaks in the Gospels is, they contend, ‘a Son of man,’ 
and as such He is subject to the human infirmities of ignorance 
and error!, ‘Does He not profess Himself,’ they ask, ‘in the 
plainest words, ignorant of the day of the last judgment? Does 
not His Evangelist assure us that He increased in “ wisdom” as 
well as in stature? This being so, was not His human know- 
ledge limited; and was not error possible, if not inevitable, 
when He passed beyond the limits of such knowledge as He 
possessed? Why should He be supposed to speak of the Pen- 
tateuch with a degree of critical ‘acumen, to which the foremost 
learning of His day and country had not yet attained? Take 
care,’ so they warn us, ‘lest in your anxiety to repudiate Arius 
and Nestorius, you deny the reality of Christ’s Human Soul, and 
become the unconscious associate of Apollinaris or of Eutyches. 
Take care, lest you make Christianity answer with its life for 
the truth of a “theory” about the historical trustworthiness of 
the Old Testament, which, although it certainly was sanctioned 
and put forward by Jesus Christ, yet has been as decidedly con- 
demned by the “ higher criticism” of the present day.’ 

Let us remark in this position, first of all, the indirect ad- 
mission that Christ, as the Eternal Son of God, is strictly 
infallible. Obvious as such a truth should be to Christians, 
Arianism, be it remembered, did not confess it. Arianism held 
that the Word Himself was ignorant of the day of judgment. 


Such a tenet was perfectly consistent with the denial that the 


1 Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. xxxi: ‘It is perfectly consistent 
with the most entire and sincere belief in our Lord’s Divinity to hold, 
as many do, that, when He vouchsafed to become a ‘“‘Son of Man,’ He 
took our nature fully, and voluntarily entered into all the conditions of 
humanity, and, among others, into that which makes our growth in all 
ordinary knowledge gradual and limited. We are expressly told, in Luke 
ii. 52, that “Jesus increased in wisdom,” as well as in “stature.” It is 
not supposed that, in His human nature, He was acquainted, more than 
any educated Jew of the age, with the mysteries of all modern sciences ; 
nor, with St. Luke’s expressions before us, can it be seriously maintained 
that, as an infant or young child, He possessed a knowledge surpassing 
that of the most pious and learned adults of His nation, upon the subject 
of the authorship and age of the different portions of the Pentateuch. At 
what period, then, of His life upon earth, is it to be supposed that He had 
granted to Him, as the Son of Man, supernaturally, full and accurate 
information on these points, so that He should be expected to speak about 
the Pentateuch in other terms than any other devout Jew of that day would 
have employed? Why should it be thought that He would speak with 
certain Divine knowledge on this matter, more than upon other matters 
of ordinary science or history ?’ 


Vir | 


456 St. Luke ii. 52, considered. 


Word was consubstantial with the Omniscient God; but it 
was utterly at variance with any pretension honestly to believe 
in His Divinity™. Yet it must be recorded with sorrow, that 
some writers who would desire nothing less than to uphold 
the name and errors of the opponent of Athanasius, do never- 
theless seem to speak at times as if it were seriously possible 
that the Infallible could have erred, or that the boundless 
knowledge of the Eternal Mind could be really limited. Let 
us then note and welcome the admission that the Eternal Son 
of God is literally infallible, even though it be made in quarters 
where His authority, as the Incarnate Christ, teaching unerringly 
substantial truth, is directly impugned and repudiated. 

It is of course urged that our Lord’s Human Soul is the seat 
of that ‘fallibility’ which is insisted upon as being so fatal to 
His authority as a Teacher. Let us then enquire what the 
statements of Scripture on this mysterious subject would really 
appear to affirm. | 

1. When St. Luke tells us that our Lord increased in wisdom 
and stature ®, we can scarcely doubt that an intellectual develop- 
ment of some kind in Christ’s human soul is indicated. This de- 
velopment, it is implied, corresponded to the growth of His bodily 
frame. The progress in wisdom was real and not merely apparent, 
just as the growth of Christ’s Human Body was a real growth. If 
only an increasing manifestation of knowledge had been meant, it 
might have been meant also that Christ only manifested increase 
of stature, while His Human Body did not really grow. But 
on the other hand, St. Luke had previously spoken of the Child 


τὰ §t. Athanasius comments as follows upon St. Mark xiii. 32, οὐδὲ 6 Ὑἱός. 
Contr. Arian. Or. iii. c. 44: διὰ τοῦτο καὶ περὶ ἀγγέλων λέγων οὖκ εἴρηκεν 
ἐπαναβαίνων, ὅτι οὐδὲ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐσιώπησε, δεικνὺς κατὰ δύο 
ταῦτα, ὅτι εἰ τὸ Πνεῦμα οἶδεν, πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὃ Λόγος ἣ Λόγος ἐστὶν οἶδε, παρ᾽ 
οὗ καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα λαμβάνει, καὶ ὅτι περὶ τοῦ Πνεύματος σιωπήσας φανερὸν 
πεποίηκεν, ὅτι περὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης αὐτοῦ λειτουργίας ἔλεγεν" οὐδὲ 6 Ὑἱός" καὶ 
τούτου τεκμήριον, ὅτι ἀνθρωπίνως εἰρηκὼς, οὔδε 6 Tids olde, δείκνυσιν ὅμως 
θεϊκῶς ἑαυτὸν τὰ πάντα εἰδότα. ὃν γὰρ λέγει Ὑἱὸν τὴν ἡμέραν μὴ εἰδέναι, τοῦτον 
εἰδέναι λέγει τὸν Πατέρα’ οὐδεὶς γὰρ, φησὶ, γινώσκει τὸν Πατέρα εἰ μὴ 6 Ὑἱός. 
πᾶς δὲ πλὴν τῶν ᾿Αρειανῶν συνομολογήσειεν, ὡς 6 τὸν Πατέρα γινώσκων πολλῷ 
μᾶλλον οἷδεν τῆς κτίσεως τὸ ὅλον, ἐν δὲ τῷ ὅλῳ καὶ τὸ τέλος ἐστὶ ταύτης. 

Olshausen observes, in Ev. Matt. xxiv. 36, Comm. i. p. 909: ‘Ist aber 
vom Sohne Gottes hier die Rede, so kann das von ihm pridicirte Nichtwissen 
der ἡμέρα und ὥρα kein absolutes seyn indem die Wesenseinheit des Vaters 
und des Sohnes das Wissen des Sohnes und des Vaters nicht specifisch zu 
trennen gestattet ; es muss vielmehr nur von dem Zustande der κένωσις des 
Herrn in Stande seiner Niedrigkeit verstanden werden.’ 

2 St. Luke ii. 52: Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτε σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ. 

[ LECT. 


Our Lord’s ‘growth in knowledge. 457 


Jesus as ‘being filled with wisdom °,’ and St. John teaches that 
as the Word Incarnate, Jesus was actually ‘full of truth.’ St. 
John means not only that our Lord was veracious, but that He 
was fully in possession of objective truth P. It is clearly implied 
that, according to St. John, this fulness of truth was an element 
of that glory which the first disciples beheld or contemplated 4. 
This statement appears to be incompatible with the supposition 
that the Human Soul of Jesus, through spiritual contact with 
which the disciples ‘beheld’ the glory of the Eternal Word, 
was Itself not ‘full of truth.’ St. John’s narrative does not 
admit of our confining this ‘fulness of truth’ to the later days 
of Christ’s ministry, or to the period which followed His Re- 
surrection. There are then two representations before us, one 
suggesting a limitation of knowledge, the other a fulness of 
knowledge in the human soul of Christ. In order to harmonize 
these statements, we need not fall back upon the vulgar ration- 
alistic expedient of supposing that between St. John’s represen- 
tation of our Lord’s Person, and that which is given in the three 
first Gospels, there is an intrinsic and radical discrepancy. If 
we take St. John’s account together with that of St. Luke, 
might it not seem that we have here a special instance of that 
tender condescension, by which our Lord willed to place Him- 
self in a relation of real sympathy with the various experiences 
of our finite existence? If by an infused knowledge He was, 
even as a Child, ‘full of truth, yet that He might enter with 
the sympathy of experience into the various conditions of our 
intellectual life, He would seem to have acquired, by the slow 
labour of observation and inference, a new mastery over truths 
which He already, in another sense, possessed. Such a co- 
existence of growth in knowledge with a possession of all its 
ultimate results would not be without a parallel in ordinary 
human life. In moral matters, a living example may teach 
with a new power some law of conduct, the truth of which we 
have before recognised intuitively. In another field of know- 
ledge, the telescope or the theodolite may verify a result of 
which we have been previously informed by a mathematical 
calculation’. We can then conceive that the reality of our 

ο St. Luke ii. 40: πληρούμενον σοφίας. 

P St. John i. 14: πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας. 

ᾳ Ibid.: ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ. 

r In the same way, every man’s stock of opinions is of a twofold character ; 
it is partly traditional and. partly acquired by personal investigation and 


thought. The traditionally received element in the mind, may be held, as 
such, with the utmost tenacity; and yet there is a real ‘increase in wis- 


VIII | 


458 Our Lord’s statement 2722 St. Mark xiii. 32, 


Lord’s intellectual development would not necessarily be in- 
consistent with the simultaneous perfection of His knowledge. 
As Man, He might have received an infused knowledge of all 
truth, and yet have taken possession through experience and in 
detail of that which was latent in His mind, in order to corre- 
spond with the intellectual conditions of ordinary human life. But, 
let us suppose that this explanation be rejected §, that St. John’s 
statement be left out of sight, and that St. Luke’s words be 
understood to imply simply that our Lord’s Human Soul ac- 
quired knowledge which It did not in any sense possess before. 
Does even any such ‘incréase in wisdom’ as this during Christ’s 
early years, warrant our saying that, in the days of His min- 
istry, our Lord was still ignorant of the real claims and worth 
of the Jewish Scriptures? Does it enable us to go further, and 
to maintain that, when He made definite statements on the 
subject, He was both the victim and the propagator of serious 
error? Surely such inferences are not less unwarranted by the 
statements of Scripture than they are destructive of Christ's 
character and authority as a teacher of truth! 

2. But it may be pleaded that our Lord, in declaring His 
ignorance of the day of the last judgment, does positively assign 
a specified limit to the knowledge actually possessed by His 
Human Soul during His ministry. ‘ Of that day,’ He says, ‘and 
that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in 
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father t” ‘If these words,’ you 


dom,’ when this element is, so to speak, taken possession of a second time 
by means of personal inquiry and reflection. This is, of course, a very 
remote analogy to the Sacred Subject discussed in the text, but it may 
serve to suggest how the facts of an infused knowledge and a real προέκοπτε 
σοφίᾳ in our Lord’s Human Soul may have been compatible. 

* The following remarks of Dr. Klee will be read with interest. Dogmatik, 
p- 511: ‘Der Menschheit Christi kann keine absolute Vollendung und 
Imperfectibilitit der Erkenntniss von Anfang an zugelegt werden, weil dann 
Christus im Eingange in seine Glorie in Bezug auf sie unverherrlicht geblie- 
ben wiire, was nicht wohl angenommen werden kann; weil ferner dann in 
Christo eine wahrhafte Allwissenheit angenommen werden miisste, was mit 
der menschlichen Natur und dem menschlichen Willen nicht wohl zu verein- 
baren ist; und wenn Einige sich damit helfen zu kénnen glaubten, dass 
diese Allwissenheit immer nur eine aus Gnade mitgetheilte ware, so ist 
dagegen zu bemerken, dass die Menschheit dann aus Gnade auch die andern 
géttlichen Attribute, z. B. Allmacht haben kénnte, und wenn man dieses mit 
der Entgegnung aus dem Felde zu schlagen glaubt, dass die Allmacht die 
Gottheit selbst, mithin absolut incommunicabel ist, so muss erwidert werden, 
dass die Allwissenheit ebenso Gottes Wesen selbst, somit unmittheilbar ist.’ 

t St. Mark xiii. 32: περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ τῆς ὥρας, οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, 
οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἐν οὐρανῷ, οὐδὲ ὁ Tids, εἰ μὴ 6 Πατήρ. [ 
: LECT. 


how understood by great Western Fathers. 459 


urge, ‘do not refer to His ignorance as God, they must refer to 
His ignorance in the only other possible sense, that is to say, to 
His ignorance as Man.’ 

Of what nature then is the ‘ignorance’ to which our Lord 
alludes in this much-controverted text? Is it a real matter-of- 
fact ignorance, or is it an ignorance which is only ideal and 
hypothetical? Is it an ignorance to which man, as man, is na- 
turally subject, but to which the Soul of Christ, the Perfect Man, 
was not subject, since His human intelligence was always illu- 
minated by an infused omniscience"? or is it an economical as 
distinct from a real ignorance? Is it the ignorance of the 
Teacher, who withholds from His disciples a knowledge which 
He actually possesses, but which it is not for their advantage 
to acquirex? or is it the ignorance which is compatible with 
implicit knowledge? Does Christ implicitly know the date of 
the day of judgment, yet, that He may rebuke the forwardness 
of His disciples, does He refrain from contemplating that which 
is potentially within the range of His mental vision? Is He 
deliberately turning away His gaze from the secrets which are 
open to it, and which a coarse, earthly curiosity would have 
greedily and quickly investigated Y ? 

With our eye upon the literal meaning of our Lord’s words, 
must we not hesitate to accept any of these explanations? It is 
indeed true that to many very thoughtful and saintly minds, 
the words, ‘neither the Son,’ have not appeared to imply any 
‘ignorance’ in the Son, even as Man. But antiquity does not 
furnish any decisive consent in favour of this belief; and it 
might seem, however involuntarily, to put a certain force upon 
the direct sense of the passage. There is no sufficient ground 
for questioning the correctness of the text2; and here, as always, 
‘if a literal explanation will stand, the furthest from the letter 
is commonly the worst.’ If elsewhere, in the course of these 
lectures, we have appealed to the literal force of the great texts in 


« St. Greg. Magn. Epist. lib. x. 39. ad Eulog.: ‘In natur& quidem humanitatis 
novit diem et horam judicii, sed tamen hunc non ex natura humanitatis novit.’ 

x St. Aug. de Trin. i. 12: Hoc enim nescit, quod nescientes facit, id est, 
quod non ita sciebat ut tunc discipulis indicaret.? St. Ambros. de Fide, v. ὃ 
222: ‘Nostrum assumpsit affectum, ut nostr& ignoratione nescire se diceret, 
non quia aliquid ipse nesciret.’ St. Hil. de Trin. ix. 62. See the passages 
accumulated by Dr. Newman, Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, p. 464, note 
J, Lib. Fath. 

y So Lange, Leben Jesu, ii. 3, p. 1280. 

z St. Ambr. de Fid. v. § 193: ‘ Primum veteres non habent codices Greci, 
quia nec Filius scit.’ 


Vill | 


oo 


460 Our Lord’s statement in St. Mark xiii. 32, 


St. John and St. Paul, as yielding a witness to the Catholic doc- 
trine, can we substitute for the literal sense of the passage before 
us, a sense which, to say the least, is not that suggested by the 
letter? If then we should understand that our Lord in His 
Human Soul was, at the time of His speaking, actually ignorant 
of the day of the last judgment, we shall find ourselves sheltered 
by Fathers of unquestioned orthodoxy®. St. Irenzeus discovers 
in our Lord’s Human ignorance a moral argument against the 
intellectual self-assertion of his own Gnostic contemporaries ὃ ; 
while he attributes Omniscience to the Divine Nature of Christ 
in the clearest terms. St. Athanasius insists that the explanation 
which he gives, restricting our Lord’s ignorance to His Human 
Soul, is a matter in which the faithful are well instructed °. 
He is careful to assert again and again our Lord’s omniscience 
as God the Word; he attributes Christ’s ‘ignorance’ as Man 
to the condescending love by which He willed to be like unto 
us in all things4, and compares it, accordingly, to His hunger 


® Klee says: ‘It was impossible, in virtue of the Hypostatic Union, to as- 
cribe to the Human Soul of Christ an absolute science and a perfect know- 
ledge. On this subject, however, there is a very marked difference between 
the Fathers.’ Dogmengeschichte, ii. 4. 7. Of the Fathers cited by Klee the 
majority assert a limitation of knowledge in our Lord’s Human Soul. 

b St. Iren. adv. Her. ii. 28,6: ‘Irrationabiliter autem inflati, audaciter 
inenarrabilia Dei mysteria scire vos dicitis ; quandoquidem et Dominus, ipse 
Filius Dei, ipsum judicii diem et horam concessit scire solum Patrem, mani- 
festé dicens, “‘ De die autem illé et hor& nemo scit, neque Filius, sed Pater 
solus.” (Marc. xiii. 32.) Si igitur scientiam diei illius Filius non erubuit 
referre ad Patrem, sed dixit quod verum est; neque nos erubescamus, que 
sunt in questionibus majora secundum nos, reservare Deo. Nemo enim super 
Magistrum est.’ That St. Irenzus is here referring to our Lord’s humanity 
is clear from the appeal to His example. Of His Divinity he says (ii. 28, 7): 
‘Spiritus Salvatoris, qui in eo est, scrutatur omnia, et altitudines Dei.’ Cf. 
Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. 5, 8. 

e St. Athan. contr. Arian. Orat. iii. c. 45: of δὲ φιλόχριστοι καὶ χριστο- 
φόροι γινώσκωμεν, ὡς οὐκ ἀγνοῶν ὃ Λόγος ἣ Λόγος ἐστὶν ἔλεγεν, “ οὐκ oida,’ 
οἶδε γὰρ, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον δεικνὺς, ὅτι τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἴδιόν ἐστι τὸ ἀγνοεῖν, 
καὶ ὅτι σάρκα ἀγνοοῦσαν ἐνεδύσατο, ἐν 7 ὧν σαρκικῶς ἔλεγεν. Dr. Mill resents 
the suggestion ‘that when even an Athanasius could speak (with the Scrip- 
tures) of the limitation of human knowledge in the Incarnate Son, the im- 
proved theology of later times is entitled to censure the sentiment, as though 
impeaching His Divine Personality.’. On the Nature of Christianity, p. 18. 

ἃ Thid. c. 43: ἀμέλει λέγων ἐν TH εὐαγγελίῳ περὶ Tov κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον 
αὐτοῦ" Πάτερ, ἐλήλυθεν ἣ Spa’ δόξασόν σου τὸν Ὑἱόν" δῆλός ἐστιν ὅτι καὶ τὴν 
περὶ τοῦ πάντων τέλους ὥραν ὡς μὲν Λόγος γινώσκει, ὧς δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἀγνοεῖ" 
ἀνθρώπου γὰρ ἴδιον τὸ ἀγνοεῖν, καὶ μάλιστα ταῦτα. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς φιλαν- 
θρωπίας ἴδιον τοῦ Σωτῆρος. ἐπειδὴ yap γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος, οὐκ ἐπαισχύνεται διὰ 
τὴν σάρκα τὴν ἄγνοοῦσαν εἰπεῖν, οὐκ οἶδα, ἵνα δείξῃ ὅτι εἰδὼς ὡς Θεὸς ἀγνοεῖ 
σαρκικῶς. οὐκ εἴρηκε γοῦν, οὐδὲ ὃ Ὑἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ οἴδεν, ἵνα μὴ ἣ set ἀγνο- 

LECT. 


~~ aia, ee 


eS ee πιόψοψ}ρν 


explained by SS. Athanasius and Cyril Alex. 461 


and thirst®. ‘To whom,’ exclaims St. Gregory Nazianzen, ‘ can 
it be a matter of doubt that Christ has a knowledge of that hour 
as God, but says that He is ignorant of it as Manf?’ St. Cyril 
of Alexandria argues that our Lord’s ‘ignorance’ as Man is in 
keeping with the whole economy of the Incarnation. As God, 
Christ did know the day of judgment; but it was consistent 
with the law of self-humiliation prescribed by His infinite love 
that He should assume all the conditions of real humanity, and 
therefore, with the rest, a limitation of knowledge. There would 
be no reasonable ground for offence at that which was only a 
consequence of the Divine Incarnation 8 You will remark, my 
brethren, the significance of such a judgment when advanced by 
this great father, the uncompromising opponent of Nestorian 
error, the strenuous assertor of the Hypostatic Union, the chief 
inheritor of all that is most characteristic in the theological 


οὔσα φαίνηται" ἀλλ᾽ ἁπλῶς, ‘ οὐδὲ 6 Ὑἱὸς, ἵνα τοῦ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων γενομένου Tict 
ἢ ἄγνοια ἢ. 

6 St. Athan. contr. Arian. Orat. iii. c. 46: ὥσπερ yap ἄνθρωπος γενόμενος 
μετὰ ἀνθρώπων πεινᾷ καὶ διψᾷ καὶ πάσχει, οὕτως μετὰ μὲν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὡς 
ἄνθρωπος οὐκ οἶδε, θεϊκῶς δὲ ἐν τῷ Πατρὶ ὧν Λόγος καὶ Σοφία οἶδε, καὶ οὐδέν 
ἐστιν ὃ ἀγνοεῖ. Cf. ad Serap. ii. 9. 

f St. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxx. 15: καίτοι πῶς ἀγνοεῖ τι τῶν ὄντων ἡ Σοφία ὃ 
ποιητὴς τῶν αἰώνων, 6 συντελεστὴς καὶ μεταποιητὴς, τὸ πέρας τῶν γενομένων : 
«ν΄... ἢ πᾶσιν εὔδηλον, ὅτι γινώσκει μὲν, ὡς Θεὸς, ἀγνοεῖν δέφησιν, ὡς ἄνθρωπος, 
ἄν τις τὸ φαινόμενον χωρίσῃ τοῦ νοουμένου;. .-.- - ὥστε τὴν ἄγνοιαν ὕπολαμ- 
βάνειν ἐπὶ τὸ εὐσεβέστερον, τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ, μὴ τῷ Θείῳ ταύτην λογιζυμένους. 

8 St. Cyril. Alex. Thesaurus, Op. tom. v. Ρ. 221: ὥσπερ οὖν συγκεχώρηκεν 
ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἄνθρωπον γενόμενον μετὰ ἀνθρώπων καὶ πεινᾶν καὶ διψῆν καὶ τὰ ἄλλα 
πάσχειν ἅπερ εἴρηται περὶ αὐτοῦ, τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ τρόπον ἀκόλουθον μὴ σκανδαλίζε- 
σθαι κἂν ὡς ἄνθρωπος λέγῃ μετὰ ἀνθρώπων ἀγνοεῖν, ὅτι τὴν αὐτὴν ἡμῖν ἐφόρεσε 
σάρκα" οἷδε μὲν yap ws Σοφία καὶ Adyos dy ἐν Πατρί" μὴ εἰδέναι δέ φησι δι’ ἡμᾶς 
kal μέθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὡς ἄνθρωπος. But see the whole discussion of the bearing of 
St. Mark xiii. 32, upon the Homoousion (Thesaurus, pp. 217-224). Certainly 
St. Cyril refers to the οἰκονομία, and he speaks of Christ’s ‘ saying that He 
did not know, on our account,’ and of His professing not to know ‘humanly.’ 
But this language does not amount to saying that Christ really did know, as 
Man, while for reasons of His Own, which were connected with His love and 
φιλανθρωπία, He said He knew not. St. Cyril’s mind appears to be, that our 
Lord did know as God, but in His love He assumed all that belongs to real 
manhood, and, therefore, actual limitation of knowledge. The word οἰκονομία 
does not seem to mean. here simply a gracious or wise arrangement, but the 
Incarnation, considered as involving Christ’s submission to human limitations. 
The Latin translator renders it ‘administrationi sive Incarnationi.’ St. Cyr. 
Op. v. p. 218. St. Cyril does not say that Christ really did know as Man; he 
must have said so, considering the bearing of his argument, had he believed 
it. He thus states the principle which he kept in view: οὕτω yap ἕκαστον 
τῶν λεγομένων ἐν TH οἰκείᾳ τάξει κείσεται" οὔτε τῶν ὅσα πρέπει γυμνῷ τῷ 
Λόγῳ καταφερομένων εἰς τὸ ἀνθρώπινον, οὔτε μὴν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀναβαινόντων 
εἰς τὸν THs θεότητος λόγον. Thes, p. 253. 

VII |. 


462 The heresy of the A gnoete. 


mind of St. Athanasius. It is of course true that a different belief 
was already widely received within the Church: it is enough to 
point to the ‘retractation’ of Leporius, to which St. Augustine 
was one of the subscribing bishops». But although a contrary 
judgment subsequently predominated in the West, it is certain 
that the leading opponents of Arianism did not shrink from re- 
cognising a limitation of knowledge in Christ’s Human Soul, and 
that they appealed to His own words as a warrant fordoing soi, 
‘But have we not here,’ you ask, ‘albeit disguised under and 
recommended by the sanction of great names, the old heresy of 
the Agnoete?’ No. The Agnoete attributed ignorance not 
merely to our Lord’s Human Soul, but to the Eternal Word. 
They seem to have imagined a confusion of Natures in Christ, 
after the Eutychian pattern, and then to have attributed igno- 
rance to that Divine Nature into which His Human Nature, as 
they held, was absorbed*, They were thus, on this point, in - 
agreement with the Arians: while Eulogius of Alexandria, who 
wrote against them, admitted that Catholic fathers before him 
had taught that, as Man, Christ had been subject to a certain 
limitation of knowledge. | 


h Quoted by Petavius, De Incarn. xi.; c. 1, § 14. Leporius appears to 
have answered the Arian objections by restricting the ignorance to our Lord’s 
Human Soul, after the manner of St. Athanasius. He retracts as follows: 
‘Ut autem et hinc nihil cuiquam in suspicione derelinquam, tunc dixi, immd 
ad objecta respondi, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum secundum hominem 
ignorare: sed nunc non solum dicere non presumo, verum etiam priorem 
anathematizo prolatam in hae parte sententiam.’ Leporius, however, seems 
really to have anticipated Nestorius in teaching a complete separation of our 
Lord’s Two Natures. Klee, Dogmengesch. ii. 4. 4. 

i Compare Bishop Forbes on Nic. Creed, p. 146, 2nd ed. And see St. 
Hil. in Matt. Comm. c. 26, n. 4; Theodoret in Ps. xv. § 7, quoted by Klee. 

k See Suicer in voc. ’Ayvonral, i. p. 65: ‘Hi docebant divinam Christi 
naturam (hance enim solam post Unionem agnoscebant, tanquam absorpta 
esset plan? humana), quedam ignordsse, ut horam extremi judicii.’? Eulogius 
of Alexandria, who wrote against them, denied any actual limitation of 
knowledge in Christ’s Manhood, but admitted that earlier Fathers had taught 
this, πρὸς Thy τῶν ᾿Αρειανῶν μανίαν ἀντιφερόμενοι ; but, as he thinks, because 
οἰκονομικώτερον ἐδοκίμασαν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπότητος ταῦτα φέρειν ἢ παραχωρεῖν. 
ἐκείνους μεθέλκειν ταῦτα κατὰ τῆς θεότητος. Apud Photium, Cod. 230, ed. 
Bekker. p. 284, 6, sub fin. Klee distinguishes between the teaching of those 
Fathers who denied that the Human Soul of Christ possessed unlimited 
knowledge, and that of the Agnoetz, who ‘ speaking of the Person of Christ 
without any limitations,’ maintained that He did not know the day of judg- 
ment. Dogmengeschichte, ii. 4. § 7. 

1 It is remarkable that ‘die Ansicht dass Christi Menschheit gleich nach 
der Vereinigung mit dem Logos Alles wusste, als Irrthum des Arnold von 
Villanova 1309 formlich verurtheilt worden.’ Klee, Dogmatik, p. 511. Arnold 
attempted to maintain that his opinion was a necessary consequence of the 

[ LECT. 


Ommnescrence and limited knowledge. 463 


‘ At any rate,’ you rejoin, ‘if our Lord’s words are to be taken 
literally, if they are held to mean that the knowledge of His 
Human Soul is in any degree limited, are we not in danger of 
Nestorian error? Does not this conjunction of “ knowledge” and 
“jonorance ἢ in one Person, and with respect to a single subject, 
dissolve the unity of the God-man™? Is not this intellectual 
dualism inconsistent with any conception we can form of a single 
personality? Cannot we understand the indisposition of later 
theologians to accept the language of St. Athanasius and others 
without an explanation, even although a sense which it does not 
of itself suggest is thereby forced upon it ?’ 

The question to be considered, my brethren, is whether such 
an objection has not a wider scope than you intend. Is it not 
equally valid against other and undisputed contrasts between 
the Divine and Human Natures of the Incarnate Son? For 
example, as God, Christ is omnipresent; as Man, He is present 
at a particular point in space®. Do you say that this, however 
mysterious, is more conceivable than the co-existence of igno- 
rance and knowledge, with respect to a single subject in a single 
personality ? Let me then ask whether this co-existence of igno- 
rance and knowledge is more mysterious than a co-existence of 
absolute blessedness and intense suffering? If the Scriptural 
words which describe the sufferings of Jesus are understood 
literally, without establishing Nestorianism; why are we in 
danger of Nestorianism if we understand Him to be speaking of 
His Manhood, when He asserts that the Son is ignorant of the 
day of judgment? If Jesus, as Man, did not enjoy the Divine 
attribute of perfect blessedness, yet without prejudice to His 
full possession of it, as God; why could He not, in like manner, 
as Man, be without the Divine attribute of perfect knowledge ? 
If as He knelt in Gethsemane, He was in one sphere of existence 
All-blessed, and in another ‘sore amazed, very heavy, sorrowful 
even unto death ;’ might He not with equal truth be in the 
one Omniscient, and in the other subject to limitations of know- 


Hypostatic Union. ‘Quantum citd anima Christi fuit unita Divinitati, 
statim ipsa anima scivit omnia, que Deus scit ; quia alias, ut dicebat, non 
fuisset cum δῷ una persona, precipué quia scire est circumstantia pertinens 
ad suppositum individuale, et non ad naturam.’ LEimeric. Direct. inquis. ii. 
qu. 11. qu. by Klee, Dogmengesch. ii. 4, 8. 

m Stier, Reden Jesu in Matt. xxiv. 36. 

-® Scotus Erigena first taught the ubiquity of our Lord’s Manhood ; in more 
recent times it was prominently put forward by Luther, as an explanation of 
his teaching on the Eucharist. See Hooker, Εἰ. P. v. 55. 27. 


vu | 


464 Superhuman range of our Lord’s knowledge. 


ledge? The difficulty ° is common to all the contrasts of the 
Divine Incarnation ; but these contrasts, while they enhance our 
sense of our Lord’s love and condescension, do not destroy our 
apprehension of the Personal Unity of the Incarnate Christ P, 
His Single Personality has two spheres of existence: in the one 
It is all-blessed, undying, and omniscient ; in the other It meets 
with pain of mind and body, with actual death, and with a cor- 
respondent liability to a limitation of knowledge. No such limi- 
tation, we may be sure, can interfere with the completeness of His 
redemptive office. It cannot be supposed to involve any ignorance 
of that which the Teacher and Saviour of mankind should know; 
while yet it suffices to place Him as Man in a perfect sympathy 
with the actual conditions of the mental life of His brethren 4, 
If then this limitation of our Lord’s human knowledge be 
admitted, to what does the admission lead? It leads, properly 
speaking, to nothing beyond itself. It amounts to this : that at the 
particular time of His speaking, the Human Soul οἵ Christ was. 
restricted as to Its range of knowledge in one particular direction. 
For it is certain from Scripture that our Lord was constantly 
giving proofs, during His earthly life, of an altogether super- 
human range of knowledge. There was not merely in Him the 
quick and penetrating discernment of a very holy soul,—not 
merely ‘that unction from the Holy One’ whereby Christians 
instinctively ‘know all things’ that concern their salvation. It 
was emphatically a knowledge of hard matters of fact, not 


ο Bishop Ellicott, in Aids to Faith, p. 445: ‘Is there really any greater 
difficulty in such a passage [as St. Mark xiii. 32] than in John xi. 33, 35, 
where we are told that those holy cheeks were still wet with human tears, 
while the loud Voice was crying, “‘ Lazarus, come forth! ” ’ 

P See Leibnitz’s reply to Wissowatius, quoted by Lessing, Sammtl. Schrift. 
ix. 277: ‘ Potest quis ex nostra hypothesi simul esse ille qui nescit diem 
judicii, nempe homo, et ille qui est Deus Altissimus. Que hypothesis nostra, 
quod idem simul possit esse Deus et homo, quamdiu non evertitur, tamdiu 
contrarium argumentum petit principium.’ 

a See Klee, Dogmatik, p. 511: ‘ Auch das kann nicht gesagt werden, dass 
die menschliche Natur, wenn sie nicht absolut vollkommen und imperfectibel 
ist, dann mit Unwissenheit behaftet ist ; denn nicht-allwissend ist nicht un- 
wissend, sonst war Adam vor seinem Falle schon, und sind die Engel und 
Heiligen in ihrer Glorie immerfort in der Unwissenheit. Unwissenheit ist 
Negation des nothwendigen und ziemenden Wissens, und solche ist in der 
Menschheit Christi nicht, in welche die ihr verbundene Gottheit alles zu 
ihrem Berufe gehérige und durch sie alles zum Heile der Menschheit ge- 
hérige iiberstrémte. Darum war auch die Steigerung der Wissenschaft der 
Menschheit keine Erlésung derselben, und fillt der Einwand, dass, wenn die 
Menschheit etwas nicht gewusst hiitte, sie eine erlésungsbediirftige gewesen 
wire, was doch nicht angenommen werden kénne, weg.’ 

LECT. 


: 
ἣ 


Superhuman range of Christ's knowledge as Man. 465 


revealed to Him by the senses, and beyond the reach of sense, 
Thus He knows the exact coin which will be found in the mouth 


of the first fish which His apostle will presently take’. He 


bases His discourse on the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, on 
an accurate knowledge of the secret communings in which His 


conscience-stricken disciples had indulged on the road to Caper- 


naum’. He gives particular instructions to the two disciples 
as to the finding of the ass on which He will make His entry 
into Jerusalemt, He is perfectly cognizant of the secret plot- 
tings of the traitor, although no human informant had disclosed 
them". Nor is this knowledge supernaturally communicated at 
the moment ; it is the result of an actual supra-sensuous sight 
of that which He describes. ‘Before that Philip called thee,’ 
He says to Nathanael, ‘ when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw 
thee*.’ Do you compare this to the knowledge of secrets 
ascribed to Elishay, to Daniel?, to St. Peter@? In these in- 
stances, as eminently in that of Daniel, the secret was revealed 
to the soul of the prophet or apostle. In the case of Christ we 
hear of no such revelation ; He speaks of the things of heaven 
with a calm familiarity, which is natural‘to One Who knows 
them as beholding them ‘in Himself.’ 

Indeed, our Lord’s knowledge embraced two districts, each 
of which really lies open only to the Eye of the Most High. 
We will not dwell on His knowledge of the unsuspected future, 


a knowledge inherent in Him, as it was imparted to those 


prophets in whom His Spirit had dwelt. We will not insist on 
His knowledge of a strictly contingent futurity, such as is 
involved in His positive assertion that Tyre and Sidon would 
have repented of their sins, if they had enjoyed the opportunities 
of Chorazin and Bethsaida¢ ; although such knowledge as this, 
considering the vast survey of motives and circumstances which 
it implies, must be strictly proper to God alone. But He knew 
the secret heart of man, and He knew the hidden thought and 
purpose of the Most High God. Such a ‘discerner’ was He 
‘of the thoughts and intents’ of human hearts4, so truly did His 
Apocalyptic title, the ‘Searcher of the reins and hearts¢, belong 


r St. Matt. xvii. 27. 

8 St. Luke ix. 47: ἰδὼν τὸν διαλογισμὸν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν. 

t St. Matt. xxi. 2; St. Mark xi. 2; St. Luke xix. 30. 

ἃ St. John xiii. 11. x Tbid. i. 49. y 2 Kings vi. 9, 32. 

2 Dan. ii. 19. 4 Acts v. 3. > St. John vi. 61: ἐν ἑαυτῷ. 
© St. Matt. xi. 21. 

ἃ Heb. iv. 12: κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας. 

9. Rev. ii, 23. The message from Jesus to each of the angels of the seven 


VIII | Hh 


466 Superhuman range of Christ's knowledge. 


to Him in the days of His historical manifestation, that ‘He 
needed not that any should testify to Him of men, for He knew 
what was in manf.” This was not a result of His taking careful 
note of peculiarities of action and character manifested to the 
eye by those around Him, but of His ‘ perceiving in His Spirit’ 
and ‘knowing in Himself®’ the unuttered reasonings and voli- 
tions which were taking shape, moment by moment, within the 
secret souls of men, just as clearly as He saw physical facts not 
ordinarily appreciated except by sensuous perception. This was 
the conviction.of His apostles. ‘We are sure,’ they said, ‘that 
Thou knowest all things.’ ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things,’ 
cries St. Peter, ‘Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ Yet more, 
in the Eternal Father Jesus encounters no impenetrable mys- 
teries ; for Jesus no clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
nor is His way in the sea, nor His path in the deep waters, nor 
His footsteps unknown. On the contrary, our Lord reciprocates 
the Father’s knowledge of Himself by an equivalent knowledge 
of the Father. ‘As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I 
the Father*”’ ‘No man knoweth Who the Son is, but the 
Father ; and Who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom 
the Son will reveal Him!” Even if our Lord should be speak- 
ing, in this passage, primarily at least, of His Divine omniscience, 
He is also plainly speaking of a knowledge infused into and 
possessed by His Human Soul, and thus His words supply the 
true foil to His statement respecting the day of judgment. If 
that statement be construed literally, it manifestly describes, not 
the normal condition of His Human Intelligence, but an excep- 
tional restriction. For the Gospel history implies that the 
knowledge infused into the Human Soul of Jesus was ordinarily 
and practically equivalent to omniscience. ‘We may conjecture,’ 
says Hooker, ‘how the powers of that Soul are illuminated, 
Which, being so. inward unto God, cannot choose but be privy 
unto all things which God worketh, and must therefore of 
necessity be endued with knowledge so far forth universal, 
though not with infinite knowledge peculiar to Deity Itself™.’ 
St. Paul’s assertion that ‘in Christ are hidden all the treasures 


Churches begins with the word οἶδα, as if in order to remind these bishops 
of His soul-penetrating omniscience. 

f St. John ii. 25: οὐ χρείαν εἶχεν ἵνα τὶς μαρτυρήσῃ περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου" 
αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐγίνωσκε τί ἦν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. δ. St. Mark ii. 8; v. 30. 

h St. John xvi. 30: νῦν οἴδαμεν ὅτι οἶδας πάντα. 

i [bid. xxi. 17: Κύριε, σὺ πάντα οἶδας" σὺ γινώσκεις ὅτι φιλῷ σε. 

k Ibid. x. 15. 1 St. Luke x. 22. m Eccl. Pol. v. 54. 7. 

[ LECT. 


OO OE ee =~ 


Limitation of knowledge zs not fallibclity. 467 


of wisdom and knowledge®,’ may practically be understood of 
Christ’s earthly life, no less than of His life of glory. If then His 
Human Intellect, flooded as it was by the infusion of boundless 
light streaming from His Deity, was denied, at a particular 
time, knowledge of the date of a particular future event, this 
may well be compared with that deprivation of the consolations 
of Deity, to which His Human Affections and Will were 
exposed when He hung dying on the Cross. If‘the Divine 
Wisdom,’ as Bishop Bull has said, ‘impressed its effects upon 
the Human Soul of Christ pro temporum ratione, in the degree 
required by particular occasions or emergencies®,’ this would be 
only one application of the principle recognised by St. Ireneeus 
and Theodoret, and rendered familiar to many of us in the 
language of Hooker. ‘As the parts, degrees, and offices of that 
mystical administration did require, which He voluntarily 
undertook, the beams of Deity did in operation always accord- 
ingly restrain or enlarge themselves?’ We may not attempt 
rashly to specify the exact motive which may have determined 
our Lord to deny to His Human Soul at one particular date 
the point of knowledge here in question; although we may 
presume generally that it was a part of that condescending love 
which led Him to beconie ‘in all things like unto His brethren.’ 
That He was ever completely ignorant of aught else, or that He 
was ignorant on this point at any other time, are inferences for 
which we have no warrant, and which we make at our peril. 
But it is not on this account alone that our Lord’s Human 
ignorance of the day of judgment, if admitted, cannot be made 
the premiss of an argument intended to destroy His authority, 
when He sanctions the Mosaic authorship and historical trust- 
worthiness of the Pentateuch. That argument involves a con- 
fusion between limitation of knowledge and liability to error ; 
whereas, plainly enough, a limitation of knowledge is one thing, 
and fallibility is another. St. Paul says that ‘we know in 


n Col. ii. 3: ἐν ᾧ εἰσι πάντες of θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ τῆς γνώσεως 
ἀπόκρυφοι. 

© Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. ii. 5, 8: ‘Quippe divinam Sapientiam menti humane 
Christi effectus suos impressisse pro temporum ‘ratione, Christumque, qua 
Homo fuit, προκόψαι copia, profecisse sapientia (Luc. ii. 52) adeoque pro 
tempore suse ἀποστολῆς, quo istA scientidé opus non habebat (this seems to 
hint at morethan anything which the text of the New Testament warrants) 
diem judicii universalis ignorare potuisse, nemini sano absurdum videbitur.’ 

P Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 54. 6. See Mr. Keble’s references from Theodoret 
(Dial. iii. t. 4, pars. i. 232) and St. Iren. Her. iii. c. 19. 3. 
VIII | Hh 2 


468 Recent assailants of the Pentateuch make Our 


part4,’ and that ‘ we see through a glass darkly". Yet St. Paul 
is so certain of the truth of that which he teaches, as to exclaim,. 
‘If we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel to you 
than that which we have preached unto you, let him be 
accursed.’ St. Paul clearly believed in his own infallibility as 
a teacher of religious truth ; and the Church of Christ has ever 
since regarded his Epistles as part of an infallible literature. 
But it is equally clear that St. Paul believed his knowledge of 
religious truth to be limited. Infallibility does not imply omni- 
‘science, any more than limited knowledge implies error. Infal- 
libility may be conferred on a human teacher. with very limited 
knowledge, by a special endowment preserving him from error. 
When we say that a teacher is infallible, we do not mean that his 
knowledge is encyclopzdaic, but merely that, when he does 
teach, he is incapable of propounding as truth that which, in 
point of fact, is not truet, 

Now the argument in question assumes that Christ our Lord, 
when teaching religious truth, was not merely fallible, but 
actually in serious error. If indeed our Lord had believed 
Himself to be ignorant, of the authorship or true character of 
the Book of Deuteronomy, we may presume that He would not 
have fallen below the natural level of ordinary heathen honesty, 
by speaking with authority upon a subject with which He was 
consciously unacquainted. It is admitted that He spoke as 
believing Himself to be teaching truth. But was He, in point 
of fact, not teaching truth? Was that which He believed to be 
knowledge nothing better than a servile echo of contemporary 
ignorance? Was His knowledge really limited on a subject- 
matter, where He was Himself unsuspicious of the existence of 
a limitation? Was He then not merely deficient in information, 


4 1 Cor. xiii. g: ἐκ μέρους yap γινώσκομεν. 

τ Thid. ver. 12: βλέπομεν yap ἄρτι δι᾽ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι. 

® Gal. i. 8, 9. 

t Cf. Bishop H. Browne, Pentateuch and Elohistic Psalms, p. 13: ‘ Igno- 
rance does not of necessity involve error. Of course in our present state of 
being, and with our propensity to lean on our wisdom, ignorance is extremely 
likely to lead to error. But ignorance is not error: and there is not one 
word in the Bible which could lead us to suppose that our blessed Lord was 
liable to error in any sense of the word or in any department of knowledge. 
I do not say that we have any distinct statements to the contrary, but there 
is nothing like a hint that there was such a liability: whereas His other 
human infirmities, weakness, weariness, sorrow, fear, suffering, temptation, 
ignorance, all these are put forward prominently, and many of them fre- 
quently.’ 

[ LECT. 


ΣΝ δον ee = 
. 


Lord both fallible, and a teacher of actual error. 469 


but fallible ; not merely fallible, but actually in error? and has 
it been reserved for the criticism of the nineteenth century to 
set Him right? It must be acknowledged that our Lord’s state- 
ment respecting the day of judgment will not avail to sustain a 
deduction which supposes, not an admitted limitation of know- 
ledge, but an unsuspected self-deception of a character and 
extent which, in the case of a purely human teacher, would be 
altogether destructive of any serious claim to teach substantial 
truth ἃ, 

Nor is this all. The denial of our Lord’s infallibility, in the 
form in which it has come before us of late years, involves an 
unfavourable judgment, not merely of His intellectual claims, 
but of the penetration and delicacy of His moral sense. This is 
the more observable because it is fatal to a distinction which 
has been projected, between our Lord’s authority as a teacher of 
spiritual or moral truth, and His authority when dealing with 
those questions which enter into the province of historical 
criticism. If in the latter sphere He is said to have been liable 
and subject to error, in the former, we are sometimes told, His 
instinct was invariably unerring. But is this the case, if our 
Lord was really deceived in His estimate of the Book of Deuter- 
onomy, and if further the account of the origin and composition 
of that book which is put forward by His censors be accepted as 
satisfactory? Our Lord quotes Deuteronomy as a work of the 
highest authority on the subject of man’s relations and duties 
to God*. Yet we are assured that in point of fact this book 
was nothing better than a pious forgery of the age of Jeremiah, 
if indeed it was not a work of that prophet, in which he em- 
ployed the name and authority of Moses as a restraint upon the 
increasing polytheism of the later years of king Josiahy, That 


u Ifa human teacher were to decline to speak on a given subject, by say- 
ing that he did not know enough about it, this would not be a reason for 
disbelieving him when he proceeded to speak confidently on a totally dis- 
tinct subject, thereby at least implying that he did know enough to warrant 
his speaking. On the contrary, his silence in the one case would be a 
reason for trusting his statements in the other. The argument which is 
under consideration in the text would have been really sound, if our Saviour 
had fixed the date of the day of judgment, and the event had shewn Him 
to have been mistaken. 

x St. Matt. iv. 4, Deut. viii. 3; St. Matt. iv. 7, Deut. vi. 16; St. Matt. 
iv. 10, Deut. vi. 13, and x. 20. 

y Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 427: ‘Supposing (to fix our ideas) 
that Jeremiah really wrote the book, we must not forget that he was a 
prophet, and, as such, habitually disposed to regard all the special impulses 


vu | 


" 


470 Could our Lord detect a pious fraud? 


hypothesis has been discussed elsewhere and by others on its 
own critical merits. Here it may suffice to observe, that if it 
could have been seriously entertained it would involve our Lord 
in something more than intellectual fallibility. If Deuter- 
onomy is indeed a forgery, Jesus Christ was not merely ignorant 
of a fact of literary history. His moral perceptions were at 
fault. They were not sufficiently fine to miss the consistency, 
the ring of truth, in a document which professed to have come 
from the great Lawgiver with a Divine authority ; while, ac- 
cording to modern writers, it was only the ‘pious’ fiction of a 
later age, and its falsehood had only not been admitted by its 
author, lest its ‘ effect’ should be counteracted 2. 

When, in the middle of the ninth century, the pseudo- 
Isidorian decretals were first brought from beyond the Alps to 


of his mind to religious activity as direct inspirations from the Divine Source 
of Truth. To us, with our inductive training and scientific habits of mind, 
the correct statement of facts appears of the first necessity ; and consciously 
to misstate them, or to state as fact what we do not know or believe from 
external testimony to be fact, is a crime against truth. But to a man who 
believed himself to be in immediate communication with the Source of all 
Truth, this condition must have been reversed. The inner voice, which he 
believed to be the voice of the Divine Teacher, would become all-powerful— 
would silence at once all doubts and questionings. What it ordered him to 
do, he would do without hesitation, as by direct command of God, and all 
considerations as to morality or immorality would either not be entertained 
at all, or would only take the form of misgivings as to whether, possibly, in 
any particular case, the command itself was really Divine. 

‘Let us imagine, then, that Jeremiah, or any other contemporary seer, 
meditating upon the condition of his country, and the means of weaning his 
people from idolatry, became possessed with the idea of writing to them an 
address, as in the name of Moses, of the kind which we have just been con- 
sidering, in which the laws ascribed to him, and handed down from an earlier 
age, which were now in many respects unsuitable, should be adapted to the 
present circumstances of the times, and re-enforced with solemn prophetical 
utterances. This thought, we may believe, would take in the prophet’ s mind 
the form of a Divine command. All question of deception or fraus pia would 
vanish.’ 

5 Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 429: ‘ Perhaps, at first, it was 
felt to be difficult or undesirable to say or do anything which might act as a 
check upon the zeal and energy which the king himself exhibited, and in 
which, as it seems, he was generally supported by the people, in putting 
down by force the gross idolatries which abounded in his kingdom. That im- 
pulsive effort, which followed immediately the reading of the ‘‘ Book,” might 
have been arrested, if he had been told at once the true origin of those awful 
words which had made so strong an impression on him. They were not less 
awful, indeed, or less true, because uttered in the name of Moses by such a 
prophet as Jeremiah. But still it is obvious that their effect was likely to be 
greatly intensified under the idea that they were the last utterances of Moses 
himself? 

[ LECT. 


One proved error fatal to Christ’s authority. 471 


Rome, they were almost immediately cited by Nicholas I. in 
reply to an appeal of Hincmar of Rheims, in order to justify 
and extend the then advancing claims of the Roman Chair@. 
We must then either suppose that this Pope was really incapable 
of detecting a forgery, which no Roman Catholic writer would 
now think of defending», or else we must imagine that, in order 
to advance an immediate ecclesiastical object, he could con- 
descend to quote a document which he knew to have been 
recently forged, as if it had been of ancient and undoubted 
authority. The former supposition is undoubtedly most wel- 
come to the common sense of Christian charity ; but it is of 
course fatal to any belief in the personal infallibility of Pope 
Nicholas I. A like dilemma awaits us in the Gospel history, if 
those unhappy theories respecting the Pentateuch to which I 
have alluded are seriously adopted. Before us is no mere 
question as to whether Christ’s knowledge was or was not 
limited ; the question is, whether as a matter of fact He taught 
or implied the truth of that which is not true, and which a finer 
moral sense than His might have seen to be false. The question 
is plainly, whether He was a trustworthy teacher of religious no 
less than of historical truth. The attempted distinction between 
a critical judgment of historical or philological facts, and a moral 
judgment of strictly spiritual and moral truths, is inapplicable 
to a case in which the moral judgment is no less involved than 
the intellectual; and we have really to choose between the in- 
fallibility, moral no less than intellectual, of Jesus Christ our 
Lord on the one hand, and the conjectural speculations of critics, 
of whatever degree of critical eminence, on the other. 

Indeed, as bearing upon this vaunted distinction between 
spiritual truth, in which our Lord is still, it seems, to be an 
authority, and historical truth, in which His authority is to be 
set aside, we have words of His Own which prove how truly He 
made the acceptance of the lower portions of His teaching a pre- 
liminary to belief in the higher. ‘If I have told you earthly 
things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of 
heavenly things¢?’ How indeed? If, when He sets the seal 
of His authority upon the writings of Moses as a whole, and 
upon the most miraculous incidents which they relate in detail, 
He is really only the uneducated Jew who ignorantly repeats 


@ Dean Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 379. 
Ὁ Compare Walter, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, pp. 206-210. 
¢ 50. John iii. 12. 

VIII | 


472 Christ's Deity illuminates His Passion. 


and reflects the prejudice of a barbarous age ; how shall we be 
sure that when He reveals the Character of God, or the precepts 
of the new life, or the reality and nature of the endless world, 
He is really trustworthy—trustworthy as an Authority to whom 
we are prepared to cling in life and in death? You say that 
here your conscience ratifies His teaching,—that the ‘ enthusiasm 
of humanity’ which is in you sets its seal upon this higher 
teaching of the Redeemer of men. Is then your conscience in 
very truth the ultimate and only teacher? Have you anticipated, 
and might you dispense with, the teaching of Christ? And 
what if your conscience, as is surely not impossible, has itself 
been warped or misled? What if, in surveying even the moral 
' matter of His teaching, you still assume to exercise a ‘ verifying 
faculty,’ and object to this precept as ascetic, and to that 
command as exacting, and to yonder most merciful revelation of 
an endless woe as ‘Tartarology!’ Alas! brethren, experience 
proves it, the descent into the Avernus of unbelief is only too 
easy. There are broad highways in the life of faith, just as in 
the life of morality, which a man cannot leave without certain 
risk of losing his way in a trackless wilderness. To deny our 
Lord’s infallibility, on the precarious ground of a single known 
limitation of knowledge in His human intellect, is not merely an 
inconsequence, it is inconsistent with any serious belief in His 
real Divinity. The common sense of faith assures us that if 
Christ is really Divine, His infallibility follows as a thing of 
course. The man who sincerely believes that Jesus Christ is 
God will not doubt that His every word standeth sure, and that 
whatever has been sealed and sanctioned by His supreme 
authority is independent of, and unassailable by, the fallible 
judgment of His creatures respecting it. 

(8) If the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity implies that as a 
teacher of truth He is infallible, it also illuminates His suffering 
death upon the Cross with an extraordinary significance. 

The degrees of importance which are attributed to the several 
events and stages of our Lord’s Life on earth, will naturally vary 
-with the variations of belief respecting His Person. With the 
Humanitarian, for instance, the dominant, almost the exclusive, 
interest will be found to centre in Christ’s Ministry, as affording 
the largest illustrations of His Human Character and of His 
moral teaching. The mysteries which surround His entrance 
into and His departure from our human world, will have been 
thrown into the background as belonging to questions of a very 
inferior degree of importance, or possibly, as at best ae to 

| LECT. 


Flumanitarian estimate of the Passion. 473 


illustrate the legendary creativeness of a subsequent age. Per- 
haps a certain historical and chronological value will still be 
᾿ allowed to attach to Christ’s Birth. Perhaps, if His Resurrection 
be admitted to have been a matter of historical occurrence, a high 
evidential significance will continue to be assigned to it, such 
as was recognised by Priestley and by all Socinians of the last 
generation. And to a Humanitarian, the interest of Christ’s 
Death will be of a yet higher kind. For Christ’s Death enters 
into His moral Self-manifestation ; it is the heroic climax of His 
devotion to truth ; it is the surest seal which a teacher can set 
upon his doctrine. Thus a Humanitarian will admit that the 
dying Christ saves the world by enriching its stock of moral life, 
by setting before the eyes of men, for all future time, the 
example of a transcendent sacrifice of self. But in the bare 
fact that Jesus died, Humanitarianism sees no mystery beyond 
that which attaches to the death of any ordinary man. The 
Crucifixion is simply regarded as a practical appendix to the 
Sermon on the Mount. And thus to the Socinian pilgrim, the ᾿ 
mountain of the beatitudes and the shores of. the Sea of Galilee 
will always and naturally appear more worthy of reverence and 
attention, than the spot on which Mary brought her Son into the 
world, or than the hill on which Jesus died. 

Far otherwise must it ever be with a sincere believer in our 
Saviour’s Godhead. Not that he can be insensible to the com- 
manding moral interest which the Life and teaching of the 
Perfect Man ever rouses in the heart of Christians. That Life 
and that teaching have indeed for him a meaning into which the 
Humanitarian cannot enter ; since the believer knows that it is 
God Who lives and speaks in Jesus.. But contemplating Jesus 
as the Incarnate God, he is necessarily attracted by those points 
in our Lord’s earthly Life, at which the contrast is most vividly 
marked between His Divine and Eternal Nature and His state 
of humiliation as Man. — 

This attraction is reflected in the believer’s religious thought, 
in his devotions, in the instinctive attitude of his interest towards 
the Life of Jesus. The creed expresses the thought of the whole 
company of the faithful. - After stating that the Only-begotten 
Son, consubstantial with the Father, for us men and for our 
salvation came down from heaven and was made Man, the creed 
proceeds to speak of His Crucifixion, Sufferings, Burial, Resur- 
rection, and Ascension. The creed makes no allusion to His 
example, or to the nature and contents of His doctrine. In an 
analogous sense the Litany gives utterance to the devotion of the 
VIII | 


474 Christ's Person the measure of Fis Passion. 


collective Church. In the Litany, Jesus, our ‘Good Lord,’ is 
entreated to deliver us ‘by’ the successive mysteries of His 
earthly Self-manifestation. Dependent on the mystery of His 
holy Incarnation are His ‘holy Nativity and Circumcision,’ 
His ‘Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, His ‘Agony and 
Bloody Sweat,’ His ‘Cross and Passion,’ His ‘precious Death 
and Burial,’ His ‘glorious Resurrection and Ascension.’ Here 
again there is no reference to His sinless example, or to His 
words of power. Why is this? Is it not because the thought 
of the Church centres most persistently upon the Person of 
Jesus? His teaching and His example, although they pre- 
suppose His Divinity, yet in many ways appeal to us indepen- 
dently of it. But the significance of His birth into the world, 
of His varied sufferings, of His death, of His rising from the 
tomb, and of His ascent to heaven, resides chiefly, if not al- 
together, in the fact that His Person is Divine. That truth 
illuminates these features of His earthly Self-manifestation, 
* which else might be thrown into the shade by the moral beauty 
of His example or of His doctrine. The birth and death of a 
mere man, and even the resurrection and glorification of a mere 
man, would only be the accessories of a higher interest centring 
in the range and influence of his ideas, in the force and con- 
sistency of his conduct, in the whole bearing of his moral and 
intellectual action upon the men of his time. But when He 
Who is born, Who suffers, Who dies, Who rises and ascends, is 
known to be personally and literally God, it is inevitable that 
the interest of thought and devotion should take a direction in 
which the ‘mystery of godliness’ is most directly and urgently 
felt. Christian devotion necessarily hovers around those critical 
turning-points in the Self-manifestation of the Infinite and Al- 
mighty Being, at which His gracious and immeasurable Self- 
humiliation most powerfully illustrates His boundless love, by 
the contrast which it yields to the majesty of His Divine and 
Eternal Person. No one would care for the birthplace or grave 
of the philosopher, when he could visit the scene of his in- 
tellectual victories ; but the Christian pilgrim, in all ages of the 
Church, is less riveted by the lake-side and mountains of Galilee, 
than by those sacred sites, where his God and Saviour first 
drew human breath and where He poured forth His Blood upon 
the Cross of shame. 

Let us imagine, if we can, that our Lord’s life had been 
written, not by the blessed Evangelists, but by some modern 
Socinian or Humanitarian author. Would not the ae pro- 

| LECT. 


All the Evangelists describe the Passion an detatrl. 475 


portions assigned to the several parts of His life have been very 
different from those which we find in the New Testament? We 
should have been presented with an analytical exposition of the 
moral greatness of Christ, in its several bearings upon the individual 
and social life of man; and His teaching would have been in- 
sisted upon as altogether eclipsing: in importance any questions 
which might be raised as to His ‘origin’ or His ‘place’ in the 
world of spirits.’ As for His Death, it would of course have 
been introduced as the natural result of His generous conflict 
with the great evils and corruptions of His day. But this 
closing episode would have been treated hurriedly and with re- 
serve. The modern writer would have led us to the foot of 
Calvary. There he would have left us to our imagination, and 
all that fallowed would have been summarized in a couple of 
sentences. The modern writer would have avoided all semblance 
of giving prominence to the ‘ physical aspects’ of the tragedy, to 
the successive insults, cruelties, cries, which indicated so many 
distinct phases of mental or bodily agony in the sufferer. He 
would have argued that to dwell intently on these things was 
unnecessarily harrowing to the feelings, and moreover, that it 
might distract attention from the general moral interest to which 
the Death of Jesus was, in his judgment, only subsidiary. Clearly 
he would not have followed in the track of the Evangelists. 
For the four Evangelists, while the plan and materials of their 
several narratives present many points of difference, yet concur 
in assigning an extraordinary importance, not merely to the 
general narrative of the Passion, but to its minute details, This 
is more in harmony with the genius of St. Mark and St. Luke 
than with that of St. Matthew ; but considering the scope and 
drift of the fourth Gospel, it is at first sight most remarkable in 
St.John. For instead of veiling the humiliations of the Word 
Incarnate, St. John regards them as so many illustrations of His 
‘glory ;’ and, indeed, “each of the four evangelical narratives, 
however condensed may be its earlier portions, expands into the 
minute particularity of a diary, as it approaches the foot of the 
Cross. 

Now this concurrent disposition of the four Evangelists is 
eminently suggestive. It implies that there is a momentous 
interest attaching, not merely to the Death of Christ as a whole, 
but to each stage and feature of the great agony in detail. It 
implies that this interest is not merely moral and human, but of 
a higher and distinct kind. The moral requirements of the 
history would have been satisfied, had we been compendiously 
VIII | 


476 Christ's Divinity explains Apostolical language 


informed that Christ died at last in attestation of the moral 
truth which He taught; but this detailed enumeration of the 
successive stages and shades of suffering, both physical and — 
mental, leads the devout Christian insensibly to look beneath 
the varying phases of protracted agony, at the unruffled, august, 
eternal Person of the insulted Sufferer; and thus Christian 
thought rests with more and more of anxious intensity upon 
the possible or probable results of an event so stupendous as 
the Death of Christ. 

Upon such a problem, human reason, left to itself, could shed 
no light whatever. It could only be sure of this :—that much 
more must be involved in the Death of Christ than in the death 
of the best of men. Had Christ been merely human, greater 
love among men, greater enthusiasm for truth as truth, greater 
devotion to the sublimest of moral teachings and to the Will of 
the Universal Father, greater contempt for pleasure when plea- 
sure is in conflict with duty, and for pain when pain is recom- 
mended by conscience, would certainly have followed upon His 
Death. These effects follow in varying degrees upon every 
sincere and costly act of human self-renouncement; and the 
moral kingdom of God is a vast treasure-house of saintly and 
living memories, in which the highest place of honour is for 
ever assigned to those who exhibit the most perfect sacrifice of 
self. Nor, most assuredly, is any the least and lowest act of 
sacrifice destined to perish: it thrills on in its undying force 
through the ages; it kindles, first in one and then in another 
unit of the vast company of moral beings, a new devotion to 
truth, to duty, to man, to God. But when we know that Jesus 
Christ is God, we are prepared to hear that something much 
more stupendous than any moral impulse, however strong and 
enduring, must have resulted from His Death—something (as 
yet we know not what) reaching far beyond the sphere and laws 
of history, beyond the world of sense and of time, of natural 
moral sequence, and of those ascertainable or hidden influences 
which pass on from man to man and from age to age. 

Nowhere is the illuminative force of Christ’s Divinity more 
felt than here. The tremendous premiss, that He Who died 
upon the Cross is truly God, when seriously and firmly believed, 
avails to carry the believer forward to any representation of the 
efficacy of His Death which rests upon an adequate authority. 

‘No person,’ says Hooker 4, ‘was born of .the Virgin but the 
Son of God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of 


ἃ Eccl. Pol. v. 52. 3. i 
LECT. 


respecting the efficacy of Fis Death. 477 


God condemned, the Son of God and no other person crucified ; 
which one only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the 
Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning 
life and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered 
as man in our behalf.’ ‘That,’ says Bishop Andrewes, ‘which 
setteth the high price upon this Sacrifice is this, that He which 
offereth it to God, is God®.’ ‘Marvel not,’ says St. Cyril of 
Jerusalem, ‘if the whole world has been redeemed, for He Who 
has died for us is no mere man, but the Only-begotten Son of 
God‘. ‘Christ,’ says St. Cyril of Alexandria, ‘would not have 
been equivalent [as a sacrifice] for the whole creation, nor would 
He have sufficed to redeem the world, nor have laid down His 
life by way of a price for it, and poured forth for us His precious . 
Blood, if He be not really the Son, and God of God, but a 
creature 8.’ 

This, as has been already noticed, is St. Peter’s meaning when 
he says that we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as 
silver and gold, but with the precious Blood of Christ, as of a 
Lamb without blemish and immaculate». This underlies St. 
Paul’s contrast between the blood of bulls and goats and the 
Blood of Christ offering Himself without spot to Godi. This 
is the substance of St. John’s announcement that the Blood 
of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanseth us from all sin*. 
Apart from this illuminating doctrine of the Godhead of Jesus 
Christ crucified, how overstrained and exaggerated are the 
New Testament representations of the effects of His Death! 


€ Second Sermon on the Passion. For other references, see Rev. W. 
Bright’s Sermons of St. Leo, Ὁ. 80. 

f Catech. 13. 2: μὴ Oavud(ns εἰ κόσμος ὅλος ἐλυτρώθη, οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄνθρωπος 
ψιλὸς, ἀλλ᾽ Ὑἱὸς Θεοῦ μονογενὴς ὃ ὑπεραποθνήσκων. St. Proclus, Hom. in 
Incarn. 6. §: ἔδει τοίνυν δυοῖν θάτερον, ἢ πᾶσιν ἐπαχθῆναι τὸν ἐκ τῆς καταδίκης 
θάνατον, ἐπειδὴ καὶ πάντες ἥμαρτον" ἢ τοιοῦτον δοθῆναι πρὸς ἀντίδοσιν τίμημα, 
ᾧ πᾶν ὑπῆρχε δικαίωμα πρὸς παραίτησιν. “AvOpwmos μὲν οὖν σῶσαι οὐκ ἠδύνατο, 
ὑπέκειτο γὰρ τῷ χρέει τῆς ἁμαρτίας. ΑγΎγελος ἐξαγοράσασθαι τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα 
οὐκ ἴσχυεν, ἤπόρει γὰρ τοιούτου λύτρου. Λοιπὸν οὖν 6 ἀναμάρτητος Θεὸς ὑπὲρ 
τῶν ἡμαρτηκότων ἀποθανεῖν ὥφειλεν᾽ αὕτη γὰρ ἐλείπετο μόνη τοῦ κακοῦ ἣ λύσις. 
c. 6: & τῶν μεγάλων πραγμάτων ! ἄλλοις ἐπραγματεύσατο τὸ ἀθάνατον, αὐτὸς 
γὰρ ὑπῆρχεν ἀθάνατος. τοιοῦτος γὰρ ἄλλος κατ᾽ οἰκονομίαν οὔτε γέγονεν, οὔτε 
ἦν, οὔτε ἔσται ποτὲ, ἢ μόνος ex τῆς παρθένου τεχθεὶς Θεὸς καὶ ἄνθρωπος" οὐκ 
ἀντιταλαντεύουσαν μόνον ἔχων τὴν ἀξίαν τῷ πλήθει τῶν ὑποδίκων, ἀλλὰ καὶ 
πάσαις ψήφοις ὑπερέχουσαν. Cc. 9: ἄνθρωπος ψιλὸς σῶσαι οὐκ ἴσχυε, Θεὸς 
γυμνὸς παθεῖν οὐκ ἠδύνατο. τί οὖν; αὐτὸς ὧν Θεὸς ὃ ᾿Εμμανουὴλ, γέγονεν 
ἄνθρωπος. (Labbe, iii. 13 sq.) 

& St. Cyril Alex. de Sancta Trinitate, dial. 4, tom. v. pp. 508, 509. See 
too Ad Reginas, i. c. 7 ; Labbe, iii, 112. Βα St. Pet. i. 19. 

i Heb. ix. 13. k 1 St. John i. 7. 
VIII | 


478 Christ's Deity explains the power of Flts Death. 


He has redeemed man from a moral and spiritual slavery]; 
He has made a propitiation for our sins™; He has really recon- 
ciled God and His creatures™. But how is such a redemption 
possible, unless the price be infinitely costly? How could such 
a propitiation be offered, save by One Whose intrinsic worth 
might tender some worthy offering from a boundless Love to a 
perfect Justice? How was a real reconciliation between God 
and His creatures to be effected, unless the Reconciler had 
some natural capacity for mediating, unless He could represent 
God to man no less truly than man to God? How could He 
‘exchange’ Divine glory for human misery, or raise man in 
his misery to companionship with God, unless He were Him- 
self Divine? Alas! brethren, if Jesus Christ be not God, the 


promises of redemption to which penitent and dying sinners _ 


cling with such thankful tenacity, forthwith dissolve into the 
evanescent forms of Jewish modes of thought, and unsubstantial 
misleading metaphors. If Jesus be not God, we stand face to 
face in the New Testament, not with the unsearchable riches, 
the boundless mercy of a Divine Saviour, able ‘to save to the 
uttermost those that come unto God by Him,’ but only with 
the crude and clinging prejudices of His uneducated or semi- 
educated followers. But if it be certain that ‘in this was mani- 
fested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His 
Only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through 
Him °, then the disclosures of revelation respecting the efficacy 
of His Death do not appear to be excessive. Vast as is the con- 
clusion of a world of sinners redeemed, atoned for, reconciled, the 
premiss that Jesus Crucified is truly God more than warrants it. 
And the accompaniments of the Passion are such as might have 
been anticipated by the faith of the Church. Why those darkened 
heavens? Why that rent veil in the temple? Why those shattered 


1 ᾿Απολύτρωσις presupposes the slavery of humanity, from which Christ 
our Lord redeems us by the λύτρον of His precious Blood. St. Matt. xx. 28; 
1 Cor. i. 30; Eph. i. 7, 143 iv. 30. The idea of purchase out of bondage is 
vividly expressed by the verb ἐξαγοράζειν, Gal. iii. 13 ; iv. 5. 

m ἱλασμός presupposes the unexpiated sin of humanity, for which Christ 
makes a propitiation. 1 St.John ii. 2;~iv. 10; Heb. ii. 17. Our Lord 
Himself is the θυσία, the προσφορά (Eph. v. 2; Heb. x. 12); He is the πάσχα 
(1 Cor. v. 7); He is the sacrificial ἀμνός (St. John i. 29, 36; 1 St. Peter i. 
19); He is the slain ἀρνίον (Rev. v. 6, 8, 12, 13 ; vi. I). 

Ὁ καταλλαγή presupposes the existence of an enmity between God and 
man, which is done away by Christ’s ‘exchanging’ His glory for our misery 
and pain, while He gives us His glory. Rom. v. 10; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. 

οι St. John iv. 9. 

[ Lecr. 


Ae 
νι ee 


Bearing of Christ's Divinity on the Sacraments. 479 


rocks? Why do those ‘bodies of the saints which slept’ return 
- from the realms of death to the city of the living? Nature, could 
she speak, would answer that her Lord is crucified. But her 
convulsive homage before the Cross of Christ is as nothing when 
compared to a moral miracle of which the only sensible symp- 
toms are an entreaty and a promise, uttered alike in human 
words. ‘Not when Christ raised the dead, not when He rebuked 
the sea and the winds, not when He expelled the devils,—but 
when He was crucified, pierced with the nails, insulted, spit 
upon, reproached, reviled,—had He strength to change the evil 
disposition of the robber, to draw to Himself that soul, harder 
though it were than the rocks around, and to honour it with the 
promise, ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in ParadiseP.’ That 
promise was a revelation of the depth and height of His redemp- 
tive power ; it was a flash of His Godhead, illuminating the true 
meaning of His humiliations as Man. If then we believe Him 
to be God, we bow our heads before His Cross, as in the presence 
of fathomless mystery, while we listen to His apostles as they 
unfold the results of His Death. If we are perplexed with some 
difficulties in contemplating these results, we may remember that 
we are but hovering.on the outskirts of a vast economy of mercy 
reaching far away beyond our furthest sight, and that the seen will 
one day be explained by the unseen. But at least no magnitude of 
redemptive mercies can possibly surprise us, when the Redeemer 
is known to be Divine; we say to ourselves with St. Paul, ‘If 
God spared not His Own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, 
how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things ?’ 

(y) As our Lord’s Divinity is the truth which illuminates and 
sustains the world-redeeming virtue of His death; so in like 
manner it explains and justifies the power of the Christian 
Sacraments, as actual channels of supernatural grace. 

To those who deny that Jesus Christ is God, the Sacraments 
are naturally nothing more than ‘badges or tokens’ of social co- 
operation4, The one Sacrament is only ‘a sign of profession 
and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned 
from others that be not christened'.’ The other is at best ‘only 
a sion of the love that Christians ought to have one towards 
another 5. Thus sacraments are viewed as altogether human 
acts; God gives nothing in them; He has no special relation to 


P St. Chrysost. De Cruce et Latrone, Hom. i. § 2. tom. ii. 404. 

4 Art. XXV. condemns this Zwinglian account of Sacraments generally. 

r Art. XX VII. condemns this Zwinglian account of Baptism. 

5 +3 XXVIII. condemns this Zwinglian account of the Holy Communion. 
Vill 


, 4 


480 Sacraments not only signs, but means, of Grace. 


them ἢ. They are regarded as purely external ceremonies, which — 


may possibly suggest certain moral ideas by recalling the memory 
of a Teacher who died many centuries ago. They help to save 
His name from dying out among men. Thus they discharge the 
functions of a public monument, or of a ribbon or medal imply- 
ing membership in an association, or of an anniversary festival 
instituted to celebrate the name of some departed historical 
worthy. It cannot be said that in point of effective moral power 
they rise to the level of a good statue or portrait; since a merely 
outward ceremonial cannot recall character and suggest moral 
sympathy as effectively as an accurate rendering of the human 
countenance in stone, or colour, or the lines of an engraving. 
Rites, with a function so purely historical, are not likely to 
survive any serious changes in human feelings and associations. 
Men gradually determine to commemorate the object of their 
regard in some other way, which may perhaps be more in har- 


mony with their personal tastes ; they do not admit that this . 


particular form of commemoration, although enjoined by the 
Author of Christianity, binds their consciences with the force of 
any moral obligation; they end by deciding that it is just as well 
to neglect such commeniorations altogether. 

If the Socinian and Zwinglian estimate of the Sacraments had 


. been that of the Church of Christ, the Sacraments would long . 


ago have been abandoned as useless ceremonies. But the 
Church has always seen in them not mere outward signs 
addressed to the taste or to the imagination, nor even signs 
(as Calvinism asserts) which are tokens of grace received inde- 
pendently of them Χ, but signs which, through the power of the 
promise and words of Christ, effect what they signify. They 
are ‘ effectual signs of grace and God’s good-will towards us, by 
the which He doth work invisibly in usy.’ Thus in baptism 


t Cat. Rac. Qu. 202: ‘Quomodo confirmare potest nos in fide id, quod 
nos ipsi facimus, quodque, licet a Domino institutum, opus tamen nostrum est, 
nihil prorsus miri im se continens ? 

α Tbid. Qu. 334: ‘Christi institutum ut fideles ipsius panem frangant et 
comedant, et ὃ calice bibant, mortis ipsius annuntiande causa.’ Ibid. 337: 
‘Nonne alia causa, ob quam ccenam instituit Dominus, superest? Nulla 
prorsus. Etsi homines multas excogitarint.’ 

x See Cartwright, quoted by Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 60. 3, note. 

y Art. XXV. Cf. P. Lombard, lib. iv. d.1. 2: ‘Sacramentum est invisibilis 
gratis visibilis forma. .... Ita signum est gratiz Dei, et invisibilis gratiz 
forma, ut ipsius imaginem gerat et causa existat.’ Church Catechism : ‘An 
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained 
by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to 
assure us thereof.’ See Martensen, Christ. Dogm. p. 418, Clark’s yee’ ᾿ 

: LECT. 


Christ’ sGodheadwarrants thegraceofSacraments.481 


the Christian child is made ‘a member of Christ, a child of 
God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven”. And ‘the 
Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and 
received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper®.’ 

This lofty estimate of the effective power of the Christian 
Sacraments is intimately connected with belief in the Divinity 
of the Incarnate Christ. The importance attached to the words 
in which Christ institutes and explains the Sacraments, varies 
concomitantly with belief in the Divinity of the Speaker. If 
the Speaker be held to be only man, then, in order to avoid 
imputing to him the language of inflated and thoughtless folly, 
it becomes necessary to empty the words of their natural and 
literal force by violent exegetical processes which, if applied 
generally, would equally destroy the witness of the New Testa- 
ment to the Atonement or to the Divinity of Christ. But if 
Christ be in very truth believed to be the Eternal Son of God, 
then the words in which He provides for the communication of 
His life-giving Humanity in His Church to the end of time may 
well be allowed to stand in all the force and simplicity of their 
natural meaning. Baptism will then be the laver of a real 
regeneration»; the Eucharist will be a real ‘communion of the 
Body and Blood’ of the Incarnate Jesus*. If, with our eye 


‘ The essential difference’ [between Prayer and Sacraments] ‘ consists in this: 
the sacred tokens of the New Covenant contain also an actual communication 
of the Being and Life of the risen Christ, Who is the Redeemer and Per- 
fecter, not only of man’s spiritual, but of man’s corporeal nature. In Prayer 
there is only a wnio mystica, a real, yet only spiritual, psychological union : 
but in the Sacraments the deepest mystery rests in the truth that in them 
Christ communicates Himself, not only spiritually, but in His glorified cor- 
poreity.’ 2 Church Catechism. 

® Ibid. Mr. Fisher observes that ‘ out of twenty-five questions of which 
the Catechism now consists, no less than seventeen relate exclusively to the 
nature and efficacy of the Sacraments.’ Liturgical Purity, p. 293, Ist ed. 

b Tit. iii. 5: διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας. Common Prayer-book, Office of 
Private Baptism: ‘This child, who being born in original sin and in the 
wrath of God, is now by the laver of regeneration in Baptism received into 
the number of the children of God.’ For the connection between Baptismal 
grace and our Lord’s Divinity, see St. Cyril Alex. de Rect& Fide, c. 37: Ti 
δρᾷς, ὦ οὗτος, κατακομίζων ἡμῶν εἰς γῆν Thy ἐλπίδα ; βεβαπτίσμεθα γὰρ οὐκ εἰς 
ἄνθρωπον ἁπλῶς, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς Θεὸν ἐνηνθρωπηκότα, καὶ aviévta ποινῆς καὶ τῶν 
ἀρχαίων αἰτιαμάτων τοὺς τὴν εἰς αὐτὸν πίστιν ἐκδεδεγμένους ... . ἀπολύων 
γὰρ ἁμαρτίας τὸν αὐτῷ προσκείμενον, τῷ ἰδίῳ λοιπὸν καταχρίει πνεύματι" ὅπερ 
ἐνίησι μὲν αὐτὸς, ὡς ἐκ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς Λόγος, καὶ ἐξ ἰδίας ἡμῖν ἀναπηγάζει φύσεως. 
He quotes Rom. viii. 9, 10. ' 

© ¢ Cor. x. 16: κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ. Χριστοῦ. . . κοινωνία τοῦ σώ- 
ματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. St. Just. Mart. Apol. i. 66: Οὐ γὰρ ὡς κοινὸν ἄρτον οὐδὲ 
κοινὸν πόμα ταῦτα λαμβάνομεν" ἀλλ᾽ ὃν τρόπον διὰ Λόγου Θεοῦ σαρκοποιηθεὶς 
γ11] Ii 


482 | faith in Christ's Divinity forbids 


upon Christ’s actual Godhead, we carefully weigh the momen- 
tous sentences in which He ordained4, and the still more 
explicit terms in which He explained 9, His institutions; if we 
ponder well His earnestly enforced doctrine, that they who 
would have part in the Eternal Life must be branches of that 
Living Vinef whose trunk is Himself; if we listen to His 
Apostle proclaiming that we are members of His Body, from 
His Flesh and from His Bones’ ; then in a sphere, so inacces- 
sible to the measurements of natural reason, so absolutely 
controlled by the great axioms of faith, it will not seem incre- 
dible that ‘as many as have been baptized into Christ’ should 
really ‘have put on Christ}, or that ‘the Body of Jesus Christ 
which was given for us’ should now, when received sacramen- 
tally, ‘preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting lifei.’ In 
view of our Lord’s Divinity, we cannot treat as so much 
profitless and vapid metaphor the weighty sentences which 


Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς 6 Swrhp ἡμῶν καὶ σάρκα καὶ αἷμα ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας ἡμῶν ἔσχεν, οὕτως 
καὶ τὴν δι᾽ εὐχῆς λόγου τοῦ παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ εὐχαριστηθεῖσαν τροφὴν, ἐὲ hs αἷμα καὶ 
σάρκες κατὰ μεταβολὴν τρέφονται ἡμῶν, ἐκείνου τοῦ σαρκοποιηθέντος ᾿Ιησοῦ καὶ 
σάρκα καὶ αἷμα ἐδιδάχθημεν εἶναι. Cf. Dorner, Person Christi, Erster Theil, 
p- 435, note 47: ‘ Justin denkt sich den ganzen Christus in Verbindung mit 
dem Abendmahl. Auch. so kann er sich diese unter dem Bilde der Incar- 


nation denken, indem Christus die Elemente zum sichbaren Organ seiner. 


Wirksamkeit und Selbstmittheilung macht, und das durch seine Erhoéhung 
verlorne Moment der Sichtbarkeit seiner objectiven Erscheinung sich in 
jedem Abendmahl durch Assumtion der sichtbaren Elemente wieder her- 
stellt.’ For the connection between the Holy Eucharist and our Lord’s 
Divinity, see St. Cyril Alex. Epist. Synod. ad Nestorium, c. 7: Τὴν ἀναίμακ- 
τον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τελοῦμεν θυσίαν, πρόσιμέν τε οὕτω ταῖς μυστικαῖς εὖλο- 
γίαις καὶ ἁγιαζόμεθα, μέτοχοι γενόμενοι τῆς τε ἁγίας σαρκὸς, καὶ τοῦ τιμίου 
αἵματος τοῦ πάντων ἡμῶν Σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ" καὶ οὐχ ὡς σάρκα κοινὴν δεχόμενοι 
(μὴ γένοιτο) οὔτε μὴν ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἡγιασμένου καὶ συναφθέντος τῷ Λόγῳ κατὰ 
τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς ἀξίας, ἤγουν ὡς θείαν ἐνοίκησιν ἐσχηκότος, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ζωοποιὸν 
ἀληθῶς καὶ ἰδίαν αὐτοῦ τοῦ Λόγου. Ζωὴ γὰρ ὧν κατὰ φύσιν ὡς Θεὺς, ἐπειδὴ 
γέγονεν ἕν πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σάρκα, ζωοποιὸν ἀπέφηνεν αὐτήν. This epistle, 
given in Routh, Scr. Opuse. ii. 17, ed. 3, was written Nov. 430, and read 
with tacit approval, as it seems, at the General Council of Ephesus in 431. 
(See Bright’s Hist. Ch. pp. 326, 333.) A similar passage is in St. Cyril’s 
Explanatio xii. Capitum, (tom. vi. p. 156,) to the effect that the Body and 
Blood in the Holy Eucharist are οὐχ ἑνὸς τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀνθρώπου κοινοῦ, 
but ἴδιον σῶμα καὶ αἷμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ζωογονοῦντος Λόγου" κοινὴ γὰρ σὰρξ 
ζωοποιεῖν οὗ δύναται, καὶ τούτου μάρτυς αὐτὸς ὃ Σωτὴρ, λέγων, “Ἢ σὰρξ οὐκ 
ὠφελεῖ οὐδὲν, τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστι τὸ ζωοποιοῦν.᾽ So in his Comm. in Joan. lib. iv. 
(tom. iv. p. 361) he says that as Christ’s Flesh, by union with the Word, 
Who is essentially Life, ζωοποιὸς γέγονε, therefore ὅταν αὐτῆς ἀπογευσόμεθα, 


τότε Thy ζωὴν ἔχομεν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς. ἃ St. Matt. xxviii. το ; xxvi. 26. 
6 St. John iii. 5; νἱ. 5623 sqq. £18St.Johnxv.1sqq. 8 Eph, v. 30. 
bh Gal. iii. 27. i Communion Service. 


[ LECT. 


depreciation of the Christian Sacraments. 483 


Apostles have traced around the Font and the Altar, any more 
than we can deal thus lightly with the precious hopes and 
promises that are graven by the Divine Spirit upon the Cross. 
The Divinity of Christ warrants the realities of sacramental 
erace as truly as it warrants the cleansing virtue of the Atoning 
Blood. If it forbids our seeing in the Great Sacrifice for sin, 
nothing higher than a moral exemplar; it also forbids our 
degrading the august institutions of the Divine Redeemer to the 
level of the dead ceremonies of the ancient law. And con- 
versely, belief in the reality of sacramental grace protects belief 
in a Christ Who is really Divine. Sacraments, if fully believed 
in, furnish outworks in the religious thought and in the daily 
habits of the Christian, which necessarily and jealously guard 
the prerogatives and honour of his adorable Lord. 

That depreciation of the Sacraments has often been followed 
by depreciation of our Lord’s Eternal Person is a simple matter 
of history). True, there have been and are earnest believers in 
our Lord’s Divinity who deny the realities of sacramental grace. 
But experience appears to shew that their position may be only 
a transitional one. History illustrates the tendency to Huma- 
nitarian declension even in cases where sacramental belief, al- 
though imperfect, has been far nearer to the truth than is the 
bare naturalism of Zwingli*. Many English Presbyterian congre- 


1 Mill, University Sermons, p.190 ; Gladstone on Church Principles, p.185. 

k Zwingli de Vera et Fals& Relig. Op. iii. p. 263. n. A: ‘Est ergo sive 
eucharistia sive synaxis, sive coena dominica nihil aliud quam commemoratio, 
qua ii, qui se Christi morte et sanguine firmiter credunt patri reconciliatos 
esse, hanc vitalem mortem annunciant, hoc est, laudant, gratulantur et 
predicant. Jam ergo sequitur, quod qui ad hunc usum aut festivitatem 
conveniunt mortem domini commemoraturi, hoc est annunciaturi, sese unius 
corporis esse membra, sese unum panem esse ipso facto testentur...... 
Qui ergo cum Christianis commeat, quum mortem domini annuntiant, qui 
simul symbolicum panem aut carnem edit, is nimirum postea secundum 
Christi prescriptum vivere debet, nam experimentum dedit aliis, quod 
Christo fidat.” Here God does and gives nothing ; the ceremony described 
is not a ‘means of grace’ but only and simply an act of man, a human 
ceremonial action, expressive of certain ideas and convictions, shared by 
those who take part in it. It is substantially the same account as that 
which is given in the formal documents of early Socinianism. (Cat. Rac. 
qu. 334, 335, 337.) It would be an extreme injustice to Calvin to identify 
his belief on the subject with these unspiritual errors. Calvin even says: 
‘Quicquid ad exprimendam veram substantialemque corporis ac sanguinis 
Domini communicationem, que sub sacris coenz symbolis fidelibus exhi- 
betur, libenter recipio ; atque ita ut non tmaginatione duntaxat aut mentis 
intelligentia percipere, sed ut re ipsa frut in alimentum vite ceterne intelli- 
gantur. Instit. iv. 17, 19. The force of this language was, however, prac- 
tically destroyed by Calvin’s doctrine of Divine decrees, which wr AG 
VIII | 112 » 


484 Sacraments preserve faith in Christ's Divinity. 


gations, founded by men who fell away from the Church in the 
seventeenth century, were, during the eighteenth, absorbed into 
Arianism or Socinianism!, The pulpit and the chair of Calvin 
are now filled by teachers who have, alas! much more in common 
with the Racovian Catechism than with the positive elements of 
the theology of the Institutes™. The restless mind of man cannot 
but at last press a principle to the real limit of its application, 
even although centuries should intervene between the premiss 
and the conclusion. If we imagine that the Sacraments are only 
picturesque memorials of an absent Christ, we are already in 
a fair way to believe that the Christ Who is thus commemorated 
as absent by a barren ceremony is, Himself only and purely 

human. Certainly if Christ were not Divine, the efficacy οὗ 
Sacraments as channels of graces that flow from His Manhood 
would be the wildest of fancies. Certainly if Sacraments are 
not thus channels of His grace, it is difficult to shew that they 
have any rightful place in a dispensation, from which the dead 
forms and profitless shadows of the synagogue have been 
banished, and where all that is authorized is instinct with the 
power of a heavenly life. The fact that such institutions as the 
Sacraments are lawful in such a religion as the Gospel, of itself 
implies their real efficacy : their efficacy points to the Godhead 
of their Founder. Instead of only reviving the. thought of a 
distant past, they quicken all the powers of the Christian by 


sacramental grace wholly dependent upon the sense of election, that is to 
say, upon the subjective state, upon the feelings, of the believer, instead of upon 
the promise and word of Christ. Thus it happened that humble minds among 
Calvinists would naturally, in virtue of their very self-distrust, tend to adopt 
a Zwinglian estimate of the Eucharist: and, historically speaking, Calvinism 
has in this matter shewn a consistent disposition to degenerate in a 
Zwinglian direction. Belief in the reality of Sacramental grace is only 
secured, when men believe that such grace depends not on themselves but on 
the promise and words of their Saviour, in other words, that it is objective. 
And the objectivity of Sacramental grace implies of necessity an Omnipotent 
Saviour, Whose grace it is. St. Augustine’s famous saying, ‘Accedit verbum 
ad elementum, et fit Sacramentum,’ is hopelessly unintelligible, unless He who 
institutes the Sacrament and warrants its abiding efficacy be indeed Divine. 

1 See Bogue and Bennett’s History of Dissenters, iii, 240, 319; iv. 319, 
383; and the Law Magazine, vol. xv. (May, 1836,) p. 348. In our own 
country, other Calvinistic communions have in general been happily preserved 
from such a fall. But the case of English Presbyterianism finds parallels in 
Geneva, in Holland, in France, and in America. Such loss of truth by others 
can never give Churchmen any ‘controversial’ satisfaction ; the more truth 
is held by Dissenters, the better both for them, and for the honour of Christ. 
But the subject may suggest warnings to ourselves. 

m Laing’s Notes of a Traveller, pp. 324-5, quoted in Chr. Rem. July, 1863, 
P- 247. 

} [ LECT. 


Priesthood and Royalty of the Divine Christ. 485 


union with a present and living Saviour; they assure us that 
Jesus of Nazareth'is to us at this moment what He was to 
His first disciples eighteen centuries ago; they make us know 
and feel that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, 
unchanging in His human tenderness, because Himself the 
unchanging God. It is the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity to 
which they point, and which in turn irradiates the perpetuity 
and the reality of their power. 

(δ) It is unnecessary for us to dwell more at length upon the 
light which our Lord’s Divinity sheds upon His Priestly office. 
We know that as His promise and presence make poor human 
words and simple elements the channels of His mercy, by taking 
them up into His kingdom and giving them a power which of 
themselves they. have not, so it is His Divinity which makes 
His Intercession in Heaven so omnipotent a force. He inter- 
cedes above, by His very presence; He does not bend as a 
suppliant before the Sanctity of God ; He is a Priest upon His 
Throne®. Nor may we linger over the bearings of His Divinity 
upon His Kingly office. The fact that He rules with a bound- 
less power, may assure us that, whether willingly or by con- 
straint, yet assuredly in the end, all moral beings shall be put 
under Him®. But you do not question the legitimacy of this 
obvious inference. And time forbids us to linger upon the 
topic, suggestive and interesting as it is. We pass then to 
consider an objection which will have been taking shape in 
many minds during the course of the preceding discussion. 

111. You admit that the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead illumi- 
nates the force of other doctrines in the Christian creed, and 
that it explains the importance attributed to her sacramental 
ordinances by the Christian Church. But you have the interests 
of morality at heart ; and you are concerned lest this doctrine 
should not merely fail to stimulate the moral life of men, but 
should even deprive mankind of a powerful incentive to moral 
energy. The Humanitarian Christ is, you contend, the most 
precious treasure in the moral capital of the world. He is the 
Perfect Man ; and men can really copy a life which a brother 
man has lived. But if Christ’s Godhead be insisted on, you 
contend that His Human Life ceases to be of value as an 


Ὁ Zech. vi. 12. Christ’s perpetual presentation of Himself before the 
Father is that which constitutes His Intercession. It lasts until the Judg- 
ment, as the enduring antitype to the High Priest’s presentation of the 
victim’s blood in the Holy of Holies. Heb. viii. 3; ix. 24. 

° 1 Cor, xy. 25; Heb. ii. 8, ; 

VIII | 


486 Odjectzon to Christ's Divinity on moral grounds. 


ethical model for humanity. An example must be in some 
sense upon a level with those who essay to imitate it. A model 
being, the conditions of whose existence are absolutely distinct 
from the conditions which surround his imitators, will be 
deemed to be beyond the reach of any serious imitation. If 
then the dogma of Christ’s Godhead does illuminate and sup- 
port other doctrines, this result is, in your judgment, purchased 
at the cost of practical interests. A merely human saviour 
would at least be imitable; and he would thus better respond 
to the immediate moral necessities of man. For man is, after 
all, the child of common sense; and before he embarks upon a 
serious enterprise, he desires to be reasonably satisfied that he 
is not aiming at the impracticable. 

1. Now this objection is of an essentially ἃ priori character. 
It contends that, if Christ is God, His Manhood must be out of 
the reach of human imitation. It does not deny the fact that 
He has been most closely imitated by those who have believed 
most entirely in His true Divinity. In fact it seems to leave 
out of sight two very pertinent considerations, 

(a) The objector appears to forget, on the one hand, that 
according to the terms of the Catholic doctrine, our Lord is 
truly and literally Man, and that it is His Human Nature which 
is. proposed to our imitation. His Divinity does not destroy 
the reality of His Manhood, by overshadowing or absorbing it. 
Certainly the Divine attributes of Jesus are beyond our imita- 
tion ; we can but adore a boundless Intelligence or a resistless 
Will. But the province of the imitable in the Life of Jesus is 
not indistinctly traced. As the Friend of publicans and sinners, 
as the Consoler of those who suffer, and as the Helper of those 
who want, Jesus Christ is at home among us. We can copy 
Him, not merely in the outward activities of charity, but in its 
inward temper; we can copy the tenderness, the meekness, the 
patience, the courage, which shine forth from His Perfect 
Manhood. His Human Perfections constitute indeed a fault- 
less Ideal of Beauty, which, as moral artists, we are bound to 
keep in view. What the true and highest model of a human 
life is, has been decided for us Christians by the appearance of 
Jesus Christ in the flesh. Others may endeavour to reopen 
that question. For us it is settled, and settled irrevocably. 
Nor are Christ’s Human Perfections other than human ; ; they 
are not, after the manner of Divine attributes, out of our reach : 
they are not designed only to remind us of what human nature 
should, but cannot, be. We can approximate to _ even 

LECT. 


Christ's Manhoodimitable, butonly through Grace.487 


indefinitely. That in our: present state of imperfection we 
should reproduce them in their fulness is indeed impossible ; 
but it is certain that a close imitation of Jesus of Nazareth is at 
once our duty and our privilege. For God has ‘predestinated 
us to be conformed’ by that which we do, not less than by that 
which we endure, to the Human Image of His Blessed Son, 
‘that He might be the Firstborn among many brethrenpP.’ 

(8) Nor, on the other hand, may it be forgotten that if we can 
thus copy our Lord, it is not in the strength of our fallen nature. 
Vain indeed would be the effort, if in a spirit of Pelagian self-re- 
liance, we should endeavour to reproduce in our own lives the like- 
ness of Christ. Our nature left to itself, enfeebled and depraved, 
cannot realize the ideal of which it is a wreck, until a higher 
power has entered into it, and made it what of itself it cannot be. 
Therefore the power of imitating Jesus comes from Jesus through 
His Spirit, His Grace, His Presence. Now, as in St. Paul’s day, 
‘Jesus Christ is in us’ Christians, ‘except we be reprobates 4,’ 
The ‘power that worketh in us’ is no mere memory of a distant 
past. It is not natural force of feeling, nor the strength with 
which self-discipline may brace the will. It is a living, ener- 
gizing, transforming influence, inseparable from the presence of a 
‘quickening Spirit” such as is in very deed our glorified Lord. 
If Christ bids us follow Him, it is because He Himself is the 
enabling principle of our obedience. If He would have us be 
like unto Himself, this is because He is willing by His indwelling 
Presence to reproduce His likeness within us. If it is His Will 
that we should grow up unto Him im all things Who is the Head, 
even Christ §; this is because His life-giving and life-sustaining 
power is really distributed throughout the body of His memberst. 
Of ourselves we are ‘miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked 4,’ 
But we take counsel of Him, and buy of‘ His gold tried in the 
fire :᾿ and forthwith we ‘can do all things through Christ That 
strengtheneth us.’ It is the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the 
Church and in Christian souls which makes the systematic imi- 
tation of Christ something else than a waste of energy”. But if 
the Christ Whom we imitate be truly human, the Christ Who 
thus creates and fertilizes moral power within us must be Divine. 
His Divinity does not disturb the outline of that model which 
is supplied by His Manhood; while it does furnish us with a 
stock of inward force, in the absence of which an imitation of 
the Perfect moral Being would be a fruitless enterprise. 

P Rom. viii. 29. 4.2 Cor. xiii. 5. ΤΊ Cor. xv. 45. δ Eph. iv. rs. 
t Ibid. 1.23; iv.16. ° Rev. iii.17. τ Phil. iv.13. . ¥ Eph. iv. 15-24. 
VU | 


488 Moral frurtfulness of faith in G hrist’s Godhei 


2. Indeed, it is precisely this belief in the Divinity of our 
Lord which has enriched human life with moral virtues such as 
civilized paganism could scarcely have appreciated, and which it 
certainly could not have created. The fruitfulness of this great 
doctrine in the sphere of morals will be more immediately appa- 
rent, if we consider one or two samples of its productiveness. 

(4) When Greek thought was keenest, and Greek art most 
triumphantly creative, and Greek political life so organized as 
to favour in a degree elsewhere unknown among men the play 
of man’s highest natural energies, Greek society was penetrated 
through and through by an invisible enemy, more fatal in its 
ravages to thought, to art, to freedom, than the sword of any 
Persian or Macedonian foe*. And already in the age of the early | 
Ceesars, Rome carried in her bosom the secret of her impending 
decline and fall in the coming centuries. St. Paul detected and 
exposed it in termsY which are not more explicit than those 
employed by Tacitus and Juvenal. The life-blood of a race may be 
drained away less nobly than on the battle-field. Every capacity 
for high and generous exertion, or for the cheerful endurance of 
suffering at the bidding of duty, all the stock of moral force on 
which a country can rely in its hour of trial, may be sapped, 
destroyed, annihilated by a domestic traitor. So it fared with 
imperial Rome. The fate of the great empire was not really de- 
cided on the Rhine or on the Danube. Before the barbarians had 
as yet begun to muster their savage hordes along the frontiers 
of ancient civilization, their work had wellnigh been completed, 
their victory had been won, in the cities, the palaces, nay, in the 
very temples of the empire. And upon what resources could the 
old Pagan Society fall back, in its alarm at, and struggle with 
this formidable foe? It could not depend upon the State. The 
Emperor was the State by impersonation ; and not unfrequently 
it happened that the Emperor was the public friend and patron 
of the State’s worst enemy. Nor could any reliance be placed 
upon philosophy... Doubtless philosophy meant well in some of 
its phases, in some of its representatives. But philosophy is 
much too feeble a thing to enter the lists successfully with animal 
passion; and, as a matter of fact, philosophy has more than once 
beerm compelled or cajoled into placing her intellectual weapons 
at the disposal of the sensualist. Nor did religion herself, in 
her pagan guise, supply the needed element of resistance and 
cure. Her mysteries were the sanction, her temples the scene, 


x Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. 9. i. 2. p. 684, etc. 
Y Rom. i. 24-32, 


[uecr. 


Its relation to the grace of Purity. 489 


her priests the ministers of the grossest debaucheries: and the 
misery of a degraded society might have seemed to be complete, 
when the institutions which were designed to shed some rays of 
light and love from a higher sphere upon the woes and brutalities 
of this lower world, did but consecrate and augment the thick 
moral darkness which made of earth a very hell 2. 

Now, that Jesus Christ has breasted this evil, is a matter of 
historical fact.: His victory is chronicled, if not in the actual 
practice, yet in the conventional standard of modern society. 
Certainly the evil in question has not been fairly driven beyond 
the frontiers of Christendom ; the tone of our social intercourse, 
the sympathies of our literature, the proceedings of our law-courts, 
would remind us from time to time ‘that the Canaanite is yet 
in the land.’ But if he is not yet expelled from our borders, at 
least he is forced to skulk away from the face of a society which 
still names the Name of Jesus Christ. The most advanced 
scepticism among us at the present day does not venture with 
impunity to advocate habits which were treated as matters of 
course by the friends of Plato: even the licence of our sensuous 
poetry does not screen such advocacy from earnest and general 
indignation. This is because, far beyond the circle of His true 
worshippers, Jesus Christ has created in modern society a pub- 
lic opinion, sternly determined to discountenance and condemn 
moral mischief, which yet it may be unable wholly to prevent. 
This public opinion is sometimes tempted to disown its real 
parentage and its undoubted obligations. Instead of rejoicing 
to confess itself the pupil of Christ, it imagines schemes of 
independent morality framed altogether by human thinkers, 
which may relieve it of its sense of indebtedness to our Lord. 
But as a matter of fact, all that is thus true and wholesome in the 
national mind is an intellectual radiation from that actual mass 
of living purity, wherewith the Healer of men has beautified the 
lives of millions of Christians. And how has Jesus made men 
pure? Did He insist upon prudential and hygienic considerations? 
Did He prove that the laws of the physical world cannot be 
strained or broken with physical impunity? No. For, at least, 
He knew human nature well; and experience does not justify the 
anticipation that scientific demonstrations of the physical con- 
sequences of sensual indulgence will be equal to the task of check-_ 
ing the surging impetuosity of passion. Did Christ, then, call 
men to purity only by the beauty of His Own example? Did He 


1 Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. 9. ii. 4. Ῥ. 718 sqq. 
VIII 


490 Purity created by fatth in a Divine Christ. 


only confront them with a living ideal of purity, so bright and 
beautiful as to shame them into hatred of animal degradation ? 
Again I say, Jesus Christ knew human nature well. If He had 
only offered an example of perfect purity, He would but have 
repeated the work of the ancient Law ; He would have given us 
an ideal, without the capacity of realizing it; He would have at 
best created a torturing sense of shortcoming and pollution, 
stimulated by the vision of an unattainable standard of perfection. 
Therefore He did not merely afford us in a Human form a fault- 
less example of chaste humanity. He did more. He did that 
which He could only do as being in truth the Almighty God. 
He made Himself one with our human nature, that He might 
heal and bless it through its contact with His Divinity. He 
folded it around His Eternal Person ; He made it His own ; He 
made it a power which could quicken and restore us. And then, 
by the gift of His Spirit, and by sacramental joints and bands, 
He bound us to 108 ; He bound us through it to Himself; nay, 
He robed us in it; by it He entered into us, and made our 
members His own. Henceforth, then, the tabernacle of God is 
with men); and ‘corpus regenerati fit caro Crucifixi.’ Hence- 
forth Christian humanity is to be conscious of a Presence within 
it, before which the unclean spirit cannot choose but shrink 
away discomfited and shamed4, The Apostle’s argument to the 
Corinthian Christians expresses the language of the Christian 
conscience in presence of impure temptations, to the end of time. 
‘Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall 
I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members 
of an harlot? God forbid®’ From that day to this, the recoil 
from an ingratitude which a Christian only can exhibit, the dread 
of an act of sacrilege which a Christian only can commit, the 
loving recognition of an inward Presence which a Christian only 
can possess—these have been the controlling,sustaining, hallowing 
motives which by God’s grace have won the victory. But these 
motives are-rooted in a doctrine of Christ’s sacramental union 
with His people, which is the veriest fable unless the indwelling 
Christ be truly God. The power of these motives to sustain us 
in purity varies with our hold on the master-truth which they so 
entirely presuppose. Such motives are strong and effective when 
our faith in a Divine Christ is strong; they are weak when our 
faith in His Divinity is weak ; they vanish from our moral life, 


@ Col. ii. 19. b Rev. xxi. 3. © Col. i. 27; 2 Cor. xiii. δ. 
4 St. Luke iv. 33. € 1 Cor, vi. 15. 
-| LECT. 


The grace of .7: umelity, 491 


and leave us a prey to our enemy, when the Godhead of Jesus is 
explicitly denied, and when the language which asserts the true 
incorporation of an Almighty Saviour with our frail humanity is 
resolved into the fantastic drapery of an empty metaphor. 

(8) If the civilized pagan was impure, he was also proud and 
self-asserting. He might perhaps deem overt acts of pride an 
imprudence, on the ground that they were likely to provoke a 
Nemesis from some spiteful deity. The fates were against con- 
tinued prosperity ; and it was unwise to boast of that which 
they waited to destroy,— 

‘Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum 
Stare dit, nimioque graves sub pondere lapsusf.’ 
But when this prudential consideration did not weigh with him, 
the pagan gave full scope to the assertion of self in thought, 
word, and act. The sentiment of pride was not in conflict with 
his higher conscience, as would be the case with Christians. He 
indulged it without scruple, nay rather upon principle,— 


‘Secundas fortunas decent superbie 8.’ 


He was utterly unable to see intrinsic evil in it; and it pene- 
trated in a subtle but intense form into the heart of those better 
ethical systems which, like the later Stoicism, appeared most 
nearly to rival the moral glories of the Gospel. Pride indeed 
might seem to have been the misery of paganism rather than its 
fault. For man cannot detach himself from himself. Man is 
to himself, under all circumstances, an ever-present subject of 
thought ; but whether this thought is humbly to correspond to 
the real conditions of his existence, or is to assume the propor- 
tions of a turgid and miserable exaggeration, will depend on the 
question whether man does or does not see constantly and truly 
that One Being Who alone can reveal to him his true place in 
the moral and intellectual universe. Paganism was not humble, 
because to paganism the true God was but a name. The whole 
life and thought of the pagan world was therefore very naturally 
based on pride. Its literature, its governments, its religious 
institutions, its social organization and hierarchy, its doctrines 
about human life and human duty—all alike were based on the 
principle of a boundless self-assertion. They were based on that 
cruel and brutal principle which in the end hands over to the 
keenest wit and to the strongest arm the sceptre of a tyranny, 
that knows no bounds, save those of its strongest lust, checked 
and controlled by the most lively apprehensions of its selfish 


f Fuucan i. 70. & Plaut. Stich. ii. 1. 27. 
vit | 


492 Lhe grace of Humility how far a product 


foresight. Now how did Jesus Christ confront this power of 
pride thus dominant in the old pagan world. By precept? Un- 
doubtedly. ‘The kings of the Gentiles,’ He said to His followers, 
‘exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority 
upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so}, 
‘Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that hum- 
bleth himself shall be exalted,” By example? Let us listen to 
Him. ‘Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and 
ye shall find rest unto your souls.’ ‘If I your Lord and Master 
have washed your feet, ye ought to wash one another's feet 1.’ 
But why was His example so cogent? What was it in Jesus 
Christ which revealed to man the moral beauty and the moral 
power of the humiliation of self? Was it that being a Man, 
Who had within His grasp the prizes which are at the command 
of genius, or the state and luxuries which may be bought by 
wealth, He put these things from Him? If He was only Man, 
did He really forego wealth and station? Were they ever—at 
least on a great scale—within His reach? Even if it be thought 
that they were; was His renunciation of them a measure of 
‘that mind which is in Christ Jesus™,’ to which St. Paul directs 
the gaze of the practical Christian? δύ. Paul, as we have seen, 
meant something far higher than the refusal of any earthly 
greatness when he drew attention to the self-renunciation of his 
Lord and Master. ‘Being in the form of God, ... He emptied 
Himself of His glory, and took on Him the form of a slave %.’ 
Historically speaking, it is not Christ’s renunciation of earthly 
advantages which has really availed to make Christians humble. 
The strongest motives to Christian humility are, first, the nearer 
sight of God’s Purity and Blessedness which we attain through 
communion with His Blessed Son, and next, or rather especially, 
as the Apostle points out, the real scope and force of Christ’s 
own example. Christ left the glory which He had with the 
Father before the world was, to become Man. He ‘took upon 
Him our flesh, and suffered death upon the Cross, that all man- 
kind might follow the example of His great humility.’ There- 
fore the manifestations of humility in Christendom have varied, 
on the whole, correspondingly with earnestness of belief in that 
pre-existent glory from which the Redeemer bent so humbly to 
the Cross of shame. Certainly, in Jesus this deepest of hu- 
miliations was the fruit of His charity for souls ; whereas, in us, 


bh St. Luke xxii. 25. i Tbid. xiv. 11. . k St. Matt. xi. 29. 
1 St. John xiii. 14. m Phil. ii, 5. n Ibid. 6, 7. 
° Collect for Sunday before Easter. 

| LECT. 


of farth in the Divinity of Chrest. 493 


humble thoughts and deeds are the necessary because the just 
expression of a true self-knowledge. Yet, nevertheless, the 
doctrine of Christ’s true Godhead, discerned through the 
voluntary lowliness and sufferings of His Manhood, braces 
humility, and rebukes pride at the bar of the Christian con- 
science. Can men really see God put such honour on humility, 
and be as though they saw it not? Can a creature, who has 
nothing good in him that he has not received, and whose moral 
evil is entirely his own, behold the Highest One thus teaching 
him the truthful attitude of a created life, without emotion, with- 
out shame, without practical self-abasement? What place is there 
for great assertions of self in a man who sincerely believes that 
he has been saved by the Death of the Incarnate Son of God ? 
‘Who has the heart to vaunt his own opinion, or to parade his 
accomplishments, or to take secret pleasure in income or station 
or intellectual power, when he reflects upon the astonishing 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when He was rich, for our 
sakes became poorP? It is the Incarnation which has confronted 
human pride, by revealing God clearly to the conscience of men, 
but also, and especially, by practically setting the highest possible 
honour upon extreme self-humiliation. It is the Incarnation 
which has led men to veil high gifts, and to resign places of in- 
fluence, and to forego the advantages of wealth and birth, that 
they might have some part, however fractionally small, in the 
moral glories of Bethlehem and Calvary. It is the Incarnation 
which has thus saved society again and again from the revo- 
lutionary or despotic violence of unbridled ambitions, by bringing 
into the field of political activity the corrective, compensating 
force of active self-denial. An enthusiasm for withdrawal from 
the general struggle to aggrandise self has fascinated those wor- 
shippers of an Incarnate God, who have learnt from Him the 
true glory of taking the lowest place at the feast of human life. 
But the motive for such repression of self is powerful only so 
far as faith in Christ’s Godhead is clear and strong. The culture 
of humility does not enter into the ordinary schemes of natural 
ethics ; and Humanitarian doctrines are found, as a rule, to 
accompany intellectual and social self-assertion. It has been 
true from the first, it is true at this hour, that a sincere faith 
which recognises in the Son of Mary, laid in His manger and 
nailed to His Cross, none other than the Only-begotten Son of 
God, is the strongest incentive to conquer the natural pride of 


P 2 Cor. viii. 9. 
vill J 


494. Lhe grace of charity how far a product 


the human heart, and to learn the bearing of a little childa— 
that true note of predestined nobility —in the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

(y) Let us take one more illustration of the moral fruitfulness 
of a faith in the Divinity of our Saviour. There is a grace, to 
which the world itself does homage, and which those who bend 
neither heart nor knee before the world’s Redeemer admit to be 
the consequence of His appearance among men. 

Heathenism, as being impure and proud, was consistently 
unloving. For as the one vice eats out the delicacy and heart 
of all true tenderness, so the other systematically enthrones 
self upon the ruins of the unselfish affections. Despite the 
Utopian sketches which have been drawn by the philosophers of 
the last century, the sentiment of ‘humanity’ is too feeble a 
thing to create in us a true love of man as man. Man does not, 
in his natural state, love his brother man, except it be from 
motives of interest or blood-relationship. Nay, man regards all 
who are not thus related to him as forming the great company 
of his natural rivals and enemies, from whom he has nothing to 
expect save that which the might or the prudence of self-interest 
may dictate. 

TO yap οἰκεῖον πιέζει 
πάνθ᾽ ὁμῶς" εὐθὺς δ᾽ ἀπήμων κραδία 
κᾶδος ἀμφ᾽ ἀλλότριοντ. 


᾿ς Such is the voice of unchristianized nature: man’s highest love 
is the love of self, varied by those subordinate affections which 
minister to self-love: and society is an agglomeration of self- 
loving beings, whose ruling instincts are shaped by force or by 
prudence into a political whole, but who are ever ready, as op- 
portunity may arise, to break forth into the excesses of an 
unchecked barbarism. Contempt for and cruelty towards the 
slave, hatred of the political or literary rival, suspicious aversion 
for the foreigner, disbelief in the reality of human virtue and of 
human disinterestedness, were recognised ingredients in the 
temper of pagan times. The science of life consisted in solving 
a practical equation between the measure of evil which it was 
desirable to inflict upon others, and the amount of suffering 
which it might be necessary to endure at their hands. Love of 
mankind would have seemed folly to a society, the recognised 
law of whose life was selfishness, and whose vices culminated in 


ᾳ St. Matt. xviii. 3. r Pind. Nem. i. 82. 
LEOT. 


of faith in the Divinity of Christ. 495 


a mutual hatred between man and man, class and class, race 
and race, thinly veiled by the hollow conventionalisms which 
distinguished Pagan civilization from pure barbarism‘. 

How did Jesus Christ reform this social corruption? He gave 
the New Commandment. ‘This is My commandment, that ye 
love one another, as I have loved yout.’ But was His love merely 
the love of a holy man for those whose hearts were too dull and 
earthly to love Him in return? Could such a human love as 
this have availed to compass a moral revolution, and to change 
the deepest instincts of mankind? Is it not a fact that Christians 
have measured the love of Jesus Christ as man measures all love, 
by observing the degree in which it involves the gift of self? 
Love is ever the gift of self. It gives that which costs us some- 
thing, or it is not love. Its spirit may vary in the degree of 
intensity, but it is ever the same. It is always and everywhere 
the sacrifice of self. It is the gift of time, or of labour, or of 
income, or of affection ; it is the surrender of reputation and of 
honour ; it is the acceptance of sorrow and of pain for others. 
The warmth of the spirit of love varies with the felt greatness 
of the sacrifice which expresses it and which is its life. There- 
fore the love of the Divine Christ is infinite. ‘He loved me,’ 
says an apostle, ‘and gave Himself for me.’ The ‘Self’ which 
He gave for man was none other than the Infinite God: the 
reality of Christ’s Godhead is the truth which can alone measure 
the greatness-of His love. The charities of His earthly life are 
but so many sparks from the central column of flame, which 
burns in the Self-devotion of the Eternal Son of God. The 
agonies of His Passion are illuminated each and all with a moral 
no less than a doctrinal meaning, by the momentous truth that. 
He Who is crucified between two thieves is nevertheless the 
Lord of Glory. From this faith in the voluntary Self-immolation 
of the Most Holy, a new power of love has streamed forth into 
the soul of man. Of this love, before the Incarnation, man not 
only had no experience ; his moral education would not have 
trained him even to admire it. But the Infinite Being bowing 
down to Self-chosen humiliation and agony, that, without violat- 
ing His essential attributes, He might win to Himself the heart 
of His erring creatures, has provoked an answer of grateful love, 


5 Tit. iii. 3: ἦμεν γάρ ποτε καὶ ἡμεῖς. ἀνόητοι, ἀπειθεῖς, πλανώμενοι, Sov- 
λεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἡδοναῖς ποικίλαις, ἐν κακίᾳ καὶ φθόνῳ διάγοντες, 
στυγητοὶ, μισοῦντες GAAHAous. 

t St. John xv. 12. ἃ Gal, ii. 20. 


vu | 


496 Charity, a product of faith in Christ's Divinity. 


first towards Himself, and then for His sake towards His crea- 
tures. Thus ‘with His Own right Hand, and with His holy 
Arm, He hath gotten Himself the victory*’ over the selfishness 
as over the sins of man. ‘We love Him because He first loved 
usy.’ If human life has been brightened by the thousand 
courtesies of our Christian civilization ; if human pain has been 
alleviated by the unnumbered activities of Christian charity ; if. 
the face of Christendom is beautified by institutions which cheer 
the earthly existence of millions; these results are due to 
Christian faith in the Charity of the Redeemer, which is infinite 
because the Redeemer is Divine. And thus the temples of 
Christendom, visibly perpetuating the worship of Christ from 
age to age, are not the only visible witnesses among us to His 
Divine prerogatives. The hospital, in which the bed of anguish 
is soothed by the hand of science under the guidance of love ; 
the penitentiary, where the victims of a selfish passion are raised 
to a new moral life by the care and delicacy of an unmercenary 
tenderness ; the school, which gathers the ragged outcasts of our 
great cities, rescuing them from the ignorance and vice of which 
else they must be the prey ;—what is the fountain-head of these 
blessed and practical results, but the truth of His Divinity, Who 
has kindled man into charity by giving Himself for man? The 
moral results of Calvary are what they are, because Christ is 
God. He Who stooped from heaven to the humiliations of the 
Cross has opened in the heart of redeemed man a fountain of 
love and compassion. No distinctions within the vast circle of 
the human family can narrow or pervert its course ; nor can it 
cease to flow while Christians believe, that Christ crucified for 
men is the Only-begotten Son of God. ᾿ 

It is therefore an error to suppose that the doctrine of our 
-Lord’s Divinity has impoverished the moral life of Christendom 
‘by removing Christ from the category of imitable beings.’ For 
on the one hand, the doctrine leaves His Humanity altogether 
intact ; on the other, it enhances the force of His example as a 
model of the graces of humility and love. Thus from age to age 
this doctrine has in truth fertilized the moral soil of human life, 
not less than it has guarded and illuminated intellectual truth. 
How indeed could it be otherwise? ‘If God spared not His 
Own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, how shall He not 
with Him also freely give us all things?’ Who shall wonder if 
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption are 


x Ps. xcviii. 2. y 1 St. John iv. 10. 
| [ LECT. 


Recapitulation. 497 


given with the gift of the Eternal Son? Who shall wonder if by 
this gift, a keen, strong sense of the Personality and Life of God, 
and withal a true estimate of man’s true dignity, of his capacity, 
through grace, for the highest forms of life, are guarded in the 
sanctuary of human thought? Who shall gainsay it, if along 
with this gift we inherit a body of revealed and certain truth, 
reposing on the word of an Infallible Teacher ; if we are washed 
in a stream of cleansing Blood, which flows from an atoning 
fountain opened on Calvary for the sin and uncleanness of a 
guilty world ; if we are sustained by sacraments which make us 
really partakers of the Nature of our God; if we are capable of 
virtues which embellish and elevate humanity, yet which, but for 
the strength and example of our Lord, might have seemed too 
plainly unattainable ? 

For the Divinity of God’s Own Son, freely given for us 
sinners to suffer and to die, is the very heart of our Christian 
faith. It cannot be denied without tearing out the vitals of a 
living Christianity. Its roots are struck far back into the pro- 
phecy, the typology, the ethics, of the Old Testament. It alone 
supplies a satisfactory explanation of the moral attitude of Jesus 
Christ towards His contemporaries. It is the true key to His 
teaching, to His miracles, to the leading mysteries of His life, to 
His power of controlling the issues of history. As such, it is 
put forward by apostles who, differing in much besides, were 
made one by this faith in His Divinity and in the truths which 
are bound up with it. It enters into the world of speculative 
discussion ; it is analysed, criticized, denounced, prescribed, be- 
trayed ; yet it emerges from the crucible wherein it has been 
exposed to the action of every intellectual solvent that hostile 
ingenuity could devise ; it has lost nothing from, it has added 
nothing to, its original significance ; it has only been clothed in 
a symbol which interprets it to new generations, and which lives 
in the confessions of the grateful Church. Its later history is 
explained when we remember the basis on which it really rests. 
The question of Christ’s Divinity is the question of the truth or 
falsehood of Christianity. ‘If Christ be not God,’ it has been 
truly said, ‘He is not so great as Mohammed.’ But Christ’s 
moral relation to Mohammed may safely be left to every un- 
sophisticated conscience ; and if the conscience owns in Him the 
Moral Chief of humanity, it must take Him at His word when 
He unveils before it His superhuman glory. 

But the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity does not merely bind us 
to the historic i seal and above all to the first records of Chris- 
VIII | Kk 


498 Christ's Divinity the strength of His Church, 


tianity ; it is at this hour the strength of the Christian Church. 
There are forces abroad in the world of thought which, if they 
could be viewed apart from all that counteracts them, might well 
make a Christian fear for the future of humanity. It is not 
merely that the Church is threatened with the loss of possessions 
secured to her by the reverence of centuries, and of a place of 
honour which may perhaps have guarded civilization more effec- 
tively than it can be shewn to have strengthened religion. The 
Faith has once triumphed without these gifts of Providence ; 
and, if God wills, she can again dispense with them. But never 
since the first ages of the Gospel was fundamental Christian 
truth denied and denounced so largely, and with such passionate 
animosity, as is the case at this moment in each of the most 
civilized nations of Europe. It may be that God has in store 
for His Church greater trials to her faith than she has yet 
experienced ; it may be that along with the revived scorn of the 
old pagan spirit, the persecuting sword of pagan hatred will yet 
be unsheathed. Be it so, if so He wills it. The holy city is 
strong in knowing ‘that God is in the midst of her, therefore 
shall she not be removed ; God shall help her, and that right 
early. The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms‘ are 
moved ; but God hath shewed His Voice, and the earth shall 
melt away.’ When the waters of human opinion rage and swell, 
and the mountains shake at the tempest of the same, our Divine 
Lord is not unequal to the defence of His Name and His 
Honour, If the sky seem dark and the winds contrary ; if ever 
and anon the strongest intellectual and social currents of our 
civilization mass themselves threateningly, as if to overwhelm 
the holy bark as she rides upon the waves; we know Who is 
with her, unwearied and vigilant, though He should seem to 
sleep. His presence forbids despondency ; His presence assures 
us that a cause which has consistently conquered in its day of 
apparent failure, cannot but calmly abide the issue. ‘ Although 
the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ; 
the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no 
meat ; the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be 
no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord,-I will joy 
in the God of my salvation.’ 

Would that these anxieties might in God’s good providence 
work out a remedy for the wounds of His Church! Would 
that, in presence of the common foe, and yet more by clinging 
to the common faith, Christians could learn to understand each 
other! Surely it might seem that agreement in so stupendous 

[ LECT. 


and a rallying-point for disunited Christendom. 499 


a belief as the Divinity of our Crucified Lord might avail to 
_ overshadow, or rather to force on a reconciliation of the differ- 
ences which divide those who.share it. Is it but the indulgence 
of a fond dream to hope that a heartier, more meditative, more 
practical grasp of the Divinity of Jesus will one day again unite 
His children in the bonds of a restored unity? Is it altogether 
chimerical to expect that Christians who believe Christ to be 
truly God, will see more clearly what is involved in that faith, 
and what is inconsistent with it ; that they will supply what is 
wanting or will abandon what is untenable in their creed and 
_ practice, so that before men and angels they may openly unite 
in the adoring confession of their Divine Head? The pulse 
quickens, and the eyes fill with tears, at the bare thought of 
this vision of peace, at this distant but blessed prospect of a 
reunited Christendom. What dark doubts would it not dispel! 
What deep consolations would it not shed forth on millions of 
souls! What fascination would not the spectacle of concordant 
prayer and harmonious action among the servants of Christ 
exert over the hearts of sinners! With what majestic energy 
would the reinvigorated Church, ‘terrible as an army with 
banners,’ address herself forthwith to the heartier promotion of 
man’s best interests, to the richer development of the Christian 
life, to more energetic labours for the conversion of the world! 
But we may not dwell, except in hope and prayer, upon the 
secrets of Divine Providence. It may be our Lord’s purpose to 
shew to His servants of this generation only His work, and to 
reserve for their children the vision of His glory. It must be 
our duty, in view of His revealed Will, and with a simple faith 
in His Wisdom and His Power, to pray our Lord ‘that all they 
that do confess God’s Holy Name, may agree in the truth of 
His Holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.’ 

But here we must close this attempt to reassert, against some 
misapprehensions of modern thought, the great truth which 
guards the honour of Christ, and which is the most precious 
feature in the intellectual heritage of Christians. And for you, 
dear brethren, who by your generous interest .or by your warm 
sympathies have so accompanied and sustained him, what can 
the preacher more fittingly or more sincerely desire, than that 
any clearer sight of the Divine Person of our glorious and living 
Lord which may have been granted you, may be, by Him, 
blessed to your present sanctification and to your endless peace ? 
If you are intellectually persuaded that in confessing the true 
Godhead of Jesus you have not followed a cunningly-devised 
vu | Kk2 


500 Conclusion. 


fable, or the crude imagination of a semi-barbarous and distant 
age, then do not allow yourselves to rest content with this intel- 
lectual persuasion. A truth so sublime, so imperious, has other 
work to do in you besides shaping into theoretic compactness a 
certain district of your thought about the goodness of God and 
the wants of man. The Divine Christ of the Gospel and the 
Church is no mere actor, though He were the greatest, in the 
great tragedy of human history; He belongs not exclusively 
or especially to the past; He is ‘the Same yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever. He is at this moment all that He was 
eighteen centuries ago, all that He has been to our fathers, 
all that He will be to our children. He is the Divine and 
Infallible Teacher, the Healer and Pardoner of sin, the Source 
of all graces, the Conqueror of Satan and of death—now, as 
of old, and as in years to come. Now as heretofore, He is 
‘able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God 
by Him ;’ now, as on the day of His triumph over death, 
‘He opens the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers ;’ now, 
as in the first age of the Church, He it is ‘that hath the key 
of David, that openeth, and no man shutteth ; and shutteth, 
and no man openeth2.’ He is ever the Same; but, as the 
children of time, whether for good or evil, we move onwards in 
perpetual change. The hours of life pass, they do not return ; 
they pass, yet they are not forgotten ; ‘pereunt et imputantur.’ 
But the present is our own ; we may resolve, if we will, to live 
as men who live for the glory of an Incarnate God. Brethren, 
you shall not repent it, if, when life’s burdens press heavily, and 
especially at that solemn hour when buman help must fail, you 
are able to lean with strong confidence on the arm of an 
Almighty Saviour. May He in deed and truth be with you, 
alike in your pilgrimage through this world, and when that 
brief journey is drawing to its close! May you, sustained by 
His Presence and aid, so pass through the valley of the shadow 
of death as to fear no evil, and to find, at the gate of the eternal 
world, that all the yearnings of faith and hope are to be more 
than satisfied by the vision of the Divine ‘King in His 
Beauty !’ 


Z Rev. iii. 7. 


[LEcT. yi11] 


NOTES. 


NOTE A, on Lecture I. 


THE works upon the Life of our Lord alluded to in the text are 
the following. 


1. Das Leben Jesu, von Dr. F. D. Strauss. 1833. This work 
passed through several editions, and in 1864 was followed 
up by Das Leben Jesu, fiir das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet. 
Leipsig, Brockhaus. 


_ Strauss’ argument is chiefly concerned with the differences 
between the Evangelists, and with the miraculous features of 
their narratives. He regards the miracles as ‘myths,’ that is to 
say, as pure fictions. His position is, that the speculative ideas 
about Jesus which were circulating in the first century were 
dressed up in a traditional form, the substance of which was 
derived from the Messianic figures of the Old Testament. This 
violent supposition was really dictated by Strauss’ philosophy. 
Denying the possible existence of miracle, of the supernatural, of 
the invisible world, and even the existence of a personal living 
God, Strauss undertakes to explain the Gospel-history as the 
natural development of germs previously latent in the world of 
human life and thought. Upon the ground that nothing is 
absolute, that all is relative, Strauss will not allow that any one 
man can absolutely have realized the ‘idea’ of humanity. The 
sanctity of Jesus was only relative ; and, speaking historically, 
Jesus fell far below the absolute Idea to which the thought of the 
Apostolical age endeavoured to elevate Him by the ‘mythical’ 
additions to his ‘ Life.’ Thus Strauss’ criticism is in reality the 
application of Hegel’s doctrine of ‘absolute idealism’ to the 
Gospel narratives. ‘It is,’ observes Dr. Mill, ‘far more from a 


502 Note A. On‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 


desire of working out on a historical ground the philosophical 
principles of his master, than from any attachment to mythical 
theories on their own account, that we are clearly to deduce the 
destructive process which Strauss has applied to the Life of 
Jesus.’ (Myth. Interpr. p. 11.) 

Strauss’ later work is addressed not to the learned, but to the 
German people, with a view to destroying the influence of the 
Lutheran pastors. He observes in his Preface : ‘ Wer die Pfaffen 
aus der Kirche schaffen will, der muss erst das Wunder aus der 
Religion schaffen.’ (Vorrede, p. xix.) With this practical object 
he. sets to work ; and although the results at which he arrives © 
are perhaps more succinctly stated than in his earlier book, the 
real difference between them is not considerable. He makes 
little use of the critical speculations on the Gospels which have ~ 
been produced in Protestant and Rationalistie Germany during 
the last thirty years. Thus he is broadly at issue with the later 
Tiibingen writers on the subject of St. Mark’s Gospel; he 
altogether disputes their favourite theory of its ‘ originality,’ and 
views it as only a colourless réswmé of the narratives of St. Mat- 
thew and St. Luke. His philosophical theory still, however, 
controls his religious speculations: Jesus did for religion what 
Socrates did for philosophy, and Aristotle for science. Although © 
the appearance of Jesus in the world constituted an epoch, He 
belonged altogether to humanity: He did not rise above it; 
He might even be surpassed. The second book, like the first, is 
an elaboration of the thesis that ‘the idea cannot attain its full 
development in a single individual of the species ;’ and to this . 
elaboration there are added some fierce attacks upon the social 
and religious institutions of Europe, designed more particularly 
to promote an anti-Christian social revolution in northern 
Germany. ᾿ 


2. Das Charakterbild Jesu, ein biblischer Versuch, von Dr. Daniel 
Schenkel. «ἴθ Auflage. Wiesbaden, 1864. 


Dr. Schenkel begins by insisting upon the ‘irrational’ cha- 
racter of the Church’s doctrine of the Union of two Natures in 
our Lord’s Person. Nothing, he thinks, short of the oppression 
with which the medizeval Church treated all attempts at free 
thought can account for the perpetuation of such a dogma. The 
Reformers, although they proclaimed the principle of free enquiry, 
yet did not venture honestly to apply it to the traditional doc- 
trine of Christ’s Person ; primitive Protestantism was afraid of 


Note A. On‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 503 


the consequences of its fundamental principle. The orthodox 
doctrine accordingly outlived the Reformation ; but the older 


‘Rationalism has established a real claim upon our gratitude by in- 


sisting upon the pure Humanity of Christ, although, Dr. Schenkel 
thinks, it has too entirely stripped Him of His ‘ Divinity,’ that 
is to say, of the moral beauty to which we may still apply that 
designation. As for the Christ of Schleiermacher, he is a pro- 
duct of the yearnings and aspirations of that earnest and gifted 
teacher, but he is not, according to Schenkel, the Jesus of 
history. Strauss does in the main, represent Jesus such as He 
was in the reality of His historical life; but Strauss’ repre- 
sentation is too much tinged with modern colourings ; nor are 
his desolating negations sufficiently counterbalanced by those 
positive results of this thoroughgoing ‘criticism’ upon which 
Dr. Schenkel proposes to dwell. For the future, faith in Christ 
is to rest on more solid bases than ‘auf denen des Aberglaubens, 
der Priesterherrschaft, und einer mit heiteren oder schreckenden 
Bildern angefiillten Phantasie.’. (p. 11.) 

Dr. Schenkel makes the most of the late Tiibingen theory of 
the ‘originality,’ as it is called, of St. Mark, and of the non- 
historical character, as he maintains, of the Gospel of St. John ; 
although he deals very ‘freely’ with the materials, which he re- 
serves as still entitled to historical consideration. Dr. Schenkel 
does not hold that the Evangelistic account of Christ’s miracles 
is altogether mythical ; it has, he thinks, a certain basis of fact. 
He admits that our Lord may have possessed what may be 
termed a miraculous gift, even if this should be rightly explained 
to be only a rare natural endowment. He had a power of calm- 
ing persons of deranged mind; His assurances of the pardon of 
their sins, acting beneficially on their nervous system, produced 
these restorative effects. Dr, Schenkel holds it to be utterly 
impossible that Jesus could have worked any of the ‘ miracles of 
nature ;’ since this would have proved him to be truly God. All 
such narratives as His calming the storm in the lake are there- 
fore part of that ‘torrent of legend’ with which the historical 
germ of His real Life has been overlaid by later enthusiasms. 
The Resurrection, accordingly, is not a fact of history ; it is a 
creation of the imaginative devotion of the first disciples. (See 
Ρ. 314.) Dr. Schenkel considers the appearances of our Risen 
Lord to have been only so many glorifications of His character 
in the hearts of those who believed in Him. To them He was 
manifested as One who lives eternally, in that He has founded 
His kingdom on earth by His word and His Spirit. 


504 Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 


The main idea of Dr. Schenkel’s book is to make the Life of 
Jesus the text of an attack upon those who are Conservatives in 
politics and orthodox Lutherans in religion. It is not so much 
a biography, or even a sketch of character, as a polemical 
pamphlet. The treatment of our Lord’s words and actions, and 
still more the highly-coloured representation of the Pharisees, 
are throughout intended to express the writer’s view of schools 
and parties in Lutheran Germany. The Pharisees of course are 
the orthodox Lutherans; while Jesus Christ is the political 
demagogue and liberal sceptic. With some few exceptions, the 
etiquette of history is scrupulously observed ; and yet the really 
historical interest is as small, as the polemical references are 
continuous and piquant. The woes which Jesus pronounces 
against the Pharisees are not directed simply against hypocrisy 
and formalism; ‘the curse of Christ,’ we are told, ‘like the 
trumpet of the last Judgment, lights for ever upon every church 
that is based upon tradition and upon the ascendancy of a 
privileged clergy.’ ‘ Der Weheruf Jesu ist noch nicht verklungen. 
Er trifft noch heute, wie eine Posaune des Gerichts, jedes auf die 
Satzungen der Ueberlieferung und auf die Herrschaft eines mit 
Vorzugsrechten ausgestatteten Klerus gegriindete Kirchenthum.’ 
(p. 254.). Perhaps the most singular illustration of profane reck- 
lessness in exegesis that can easily be found in modern literature 
is Dr. Schenkel’s explanation οὗ the sin against the Holy Ghost. 
This sin, he tells us, does not consist, as we may have mistakenly 
supposed, in a deliberate relapse from grace into impenitence ; it 
is not the sin of worldly or unbelieving persons. It is the sin of 
orthodoxy ; it is a ‘ Theologisch-hierarchischer Verhirtung und 
Verstockung ;’ and those who defend and propagate the ancient 
faith of Christians, in spite of rationalistic warnings against doing 
so, are really guilty of it. (Charakt. p. 106.) 

Dr. Schenkel has explained himself more elaborately on some 
points in his pamphlet ‘Die Protestantische Freiheit, in ihrem 
gegenwartigen Kampfe mit der kirchlichen Reaktion.’ Wies- 
baden, 1862. He fiercely demands a Humanitarian Christology 
(p. 153). He laments that even Zwingli’s thought was still 
fettered by the formule of Nica and Chalcedon (p. 152), nay, 
he remarks that St. Paul himself has assigned to Christ a rank 
which led on naturally to the Church-belief in the Divinity of 
His Person (p. 148). That belief Dr. Schenkel considers to be 
a shred of heathen superstition which had found its way into the 
circle of Christian ideas (ibid.); while he sorrowfully protests 
that the adoration of Jesus, both in the public Services of the 


Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. | 505 


Church and in the Christian consciousness, has superseded that 
of God the Father. ‘ Vom fiinften Jahrhundert bis zur Reforma- 
tion (he might have begun four centuries earlier and gone on for 
three centuries later) wird Jesus Christ durchgingig als der 
Herrgott verehrt’ (p. 149). Indeed, throughout this brochure 
Dr. Schenkel’s positions are simply those of the old Socinianism, 
_ resting however upon a Rationalistic method of treatment, which 
in its more logical phases regards much of what Socinianism 
itself retains, as the yoke of an intolerable orthodoxy. | 


3. Geschichte Christus’ und Seiner Zeit, von Heinrich Ewald. 
Gottingen, 1857. 2% Ausgabe. 


This work is on no account to be placed on the level of those 
of Strauss or Schenkel, to which in some most vital particulars 
it is opposed. Indeed, Ewald’s defence of St. John’s Gospel, and 
his deeper spirituality of tone, must command a religious in- 
terest, which would be of a high order, if only this writer 
believed in our Lord’s Godhead. That this, unhappily, is not 
the case, will be apparent upon a careful study of the concluding 
chapter of this volyme on ‘ Die Ewige Verherrlichung,’ pp. 496- 
504,—beautiful as are some of the passages which it contains. 
His explanation of the titles ‘Son of God’ and ‘ Word of God,’ 
p- 502, is altogether inadequate; and his statement that ‘nie 
hat Jesu als der Sohn und das Wort Gottes sich mit der Vater 
und Gotte Selbst (from whom Ewald accordingly distinguishes 
our Lord) verwechselt oder vermessen sich selbst diesem gleich- 
gestellt,’ is simply contradicted by St. John v. and x. 


4. Die Menschliche Entwickelung Jesu Christi, von Th. Kevm. 
Ziirich, 1861. Die geschichtliche Wiirde Jesu, von Th. Keim, 
Ziirich, 1864. Der geschichtliche Christus, Hine Rethe von 
Vortrigen mit Quellenbeweis und Chronologie des Lebens 
Jesu, von Th. Keim. Ziirich, 1866. 


Dr. Keim, although rejecting the fourth Gospel, retains too 
much of the mind of Schleiermacher to be justly associated with 
Drs. Strauss or Schenkel. Dr. Keim, indeed, sees in our Lord 
only a Man, but still an eminently mysterious Man of incom- 
parable grandeur of character. He recognises, although in- 
adequately, the startling self-assertion of our Lord; and he 
differs most emphatically from Strauss, Schenkel, and Renan in 
recognising the real sinlessness of Jesus. He admits, too, the 
historical value of our Lord’s eschatological discourses ; he does 


506 «Νοίε A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 


not regard His miracles ‘of nature’ as absolutely impossible ; 
and he heartily believes in the reality of Christ’s own Resurrec- 
tion from the dead. He cannot account for the phenomenon of 
the Church, if the Resurrection be denied. Altogether he seems 
to consider that the Life of Jesus as a spiritual, moral, and, in 
some respects, supernatural fact, is unique ; but an intellectual 
spectre, the assumed invariability of historical laws, as we con- 
ceive them, seems to interpose so as to prevent him from 
drawing the otherwise inevitable inference. Yet for such as 
he is, let us hope much. 


5. La Vie de Jésus, par LE. Renan. Paris, 1863. 


Of this well-known book it may suffice here to say a very few 
words. Its one and only excellence is its incomparable style. 
From every other point of view it is deplorable. Historically, it 
deals most arbitrarily with the data upon which it professes to 
be based. Thus in the different pictures of Christ’s aim and 
action, during what are termed the second and the third periods 
of His Ministry, a purely artificial contrast is presented. Theo- 
logically, this work proceeds throughout on a really atheistic 
assumption, disguised beneath the thin veil of a pantheistic 
phraseology. It assumes that no such being as a personal God 
exists at all. The ‘god’ with whom, according to M. Renan, 
Jesus has such uninterrupted communion, but from whom he is 
so entirely distinct, is only the ‘category of the ideal.’ It is, 
however, when we look at the ‘ Vie de Jésus’ from a moral point 
of view, that its shortcomings are most apparent in their length 
and breadth. Its hero is a fanatical impostor, who pretends to 
be and to do that which he knows to be beyond him, but who 
nevertheless is held up to our admiration as the ideal of hu- 
manity. In place of the Divine and Human Christ of the 
Gospels, M. Renan presents us with a character devoid of any 
real majesty, of any tolerable consistency, and even of the con- 
stituent elements of moral goodness. If M. Renan himself does 
not perceive that the object of his enthusiasm is simply an 
offence to any healthy conscience, this is only an additional 
proof, if one were needed, of the fatal influence of pantheistic 
thought upon the most gifted natures. It destroys the sensitive- 
ness of the moral nerve. Enough to say that M. Renan presents 
us with a Christ who in his Gethsemane was possibly thinking 
of ‘les jeunes filles qui auraient peut-étre consenti a l’aimer.’ 


(p. 379.) 


\ 


Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 507 


Ié ought perhaps here to be added that M. de Pressensé’s 
work, ‘ Jésus-Christ, son’ Temps, sa Vie, son Ciuvre,’ Paris, 1865, — 
although failing (as might be expected) to do justice to the 
sacramental side of our Lord’s Incarnation and Teaching, is yet 
on the whole a most noble contribution to the cause of Truth, 
for which the deep gratitude of all sincere Christians cannot but 
be due to its accomplished author. 


6. Hece Homo; a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus 
Christ. London and Cambridge, Macmillan, 1866. 


Every one who reads ‘Ecce Homo’ must heartily admire the 
generous passion for human improvement which glows through- 
out the whole volume. And especial acknowledgment is due to 
the author from Christian believers, for the emphasis with 
which he has insisted on the following truths :— 

Christ’s moral sublimity. 
Christ’s claim of supremacy. 
Christ’s success in His work. 

Incidentally, moreover, he has brought out into their true 
prominence some portions of the truth, which are lost sight of 
by popular religionists in England. As an example of this, his 
earnest recognition of the visibility of the Society founded by 
Christ may be instanced. But, on the other hand, the writer 
has carefully avoided all reference to the cardinal question of 
Christ’s Person; and he tells us that he has done this deliber- 
ately. (Pref. to 5th Ed. p. xx.) The resylt however is, that his 
book is pervaded, as it seems to many of his readers, by an es- 
sential flaw. It is not merely that our Lord’s claims cannot be 
morally estimated apart from a clear estimate of His Person. 
The author professes to be answering the question, ‘What was 
Christ’s object in founding the Society which is called by His 
Name?’ Now to attempt to answer this question, while dis- 
missing all theological consideration of the dignity of Christ’s 
Person, involves the tacit assumption that the due estimate of 
His Person is not relevant to the appreciation of His Work; in 
other words, the assumption, that so far as the evidence yielded 
by the work of Christ goes, the Christology of the Nicene Creed is 
at least uncertain. The author of ‘Ecce Homo’ is however either 
a Humanitarian, or he is a believer in our Lord’s Divinity, or 
he is undecided. If he is a Humanitarian, then the assumption 
is, as far as it goes, in harmony with his personal convictions ; 
only it should, for various and obvious reasons, have been more 


508 Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 


plainly stated, since, inter alia, it embarrasses his view of our 
Lord’s claims and character with difficulties which he does not 
recognise. If he believes in Christ’s Divinity, then in his forth- 
coming volume (besides rewriting such chapters as chap. 2, on 
The Temptation) he will have to enlarge very seriously, or 
rather altogether to recast, the account which he has actually 
given of Christ’s work. If the writer be himself in doubt as to 
whether Christ is or is not God, then surely he is not in a 
position to give any account whatever of Christ’s work, which 
is within the limits of human capacity on one hypothesis, and as 
utterly transcends them on the other. In short, it is impossible 
for a man to profess to give a real answer to the question, what 
Christ intended to accomplish, until he has told us who and 
what Christ was. That fragment of Christ’s work of which we 
gather an account from history contributes its share to the 
solution of the question of Christ’s Person; but our Lord’s 
Personal Rank is too intimately bound up with the moral 
justification of His language, and with the real nature and range 
of His action upon humanity, to bear the adjournment which 
the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ has thought advisable. 

There are several errors in the volume which might seem to 
shew that the author is himself unfamiliar with the faith of the 
Church ; as they would not have been natural in a person who 
believed it, but who was throwing himself for the time being 
into the mental position of a Humanitarian in order the better 
to do justice to his arguments. For instance, the author con- 
founds St. John’s Baptism with Christ’s. He supposes that 
Nicodemus caine to Jesus by night in order to seek a dispen- 
sation from being publicly baptized, and so admitted into 
Christ’s Society. He imagines that-Christ prayed on the Cross 
only for the Roman soldiers who actually crucified Him, and 
not for the Pharisees, against whom (it is a most painful as well 
as an unwarranted suggestion) He continued to feel fierce 
indignation. This indeed is an instance of the author’s ten- 
dency to identify his own imaginatioris with the motives and 
feelings of Jesus Christ, where Scripture is either silent or 
points in an opposite direction. The author is apparently 
carried away by his earnest indignation against certain forms 
of selfish and insincere vice, such as Pharisaism ; nor is he 
wholly free from the disposition so to colour the past as to make 
it express suggestively his own feelings about persons and 
schools of the present day. The naturalistic tone of his thought 
is apparent in his formula of ‘enthusiasm,’ as the modern equi- 


Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. — 509 


J 


valent to inspiration and the gift of the Holy Spirit ; in his 
general substitution of the conception of anti-social vice for the 
deeper Scriptural idea of sin; and in his suggestion that Chris- 
tians may treat the special precepts of Christ with the same 
‘boldness’ with which He treated those of the law of Moses. 

Of the practical results of his book it is difficult to form an 
estimate. In some instances it may lead to the contented sub- 
stitution of a naturalistic instead of a miraculous Christianity, 
of philanthropic ‘ enthusiasm’ instead of a supernatural life, of 
loyalty to a moral reforming hero, instead of religious devotion 
to a Divine Saviour of the world. But let us also trust that so 
fearless a recognition of the claims of Christ to be the King 
and Centre of renewed humanity, may assist other minds to 
grasp and hold the truth which alone makes those claims, taken 
as a whole, justifiable ; and may recruit the ranks of our Lord’s 
true worshippers from among the many thoughtful but unin- 
structed persons who have never faced the dilemma which this 
volume so forcibly, albeit so tacitly, suggests. 

% % Χ % 

Since these words were written, the volume under discussion 
has found an apologist, whose opinion on this, as on any other 
subject, is a matter of national interest®. If the present writer 
has been guilty of forming and propagating an unjust estimate 
of a remarkable work, he may at least repair his error by 
referring his readers to pages, in which genius and orthodoxy 
have done their best for the Christian honour of ‘Ecce Homo,’ 
These pages must indeed of necessity be read with sympathy 
and admiration, if not with entire assent, by all who do not 
consider a theological work to have been discredited, when it is 
asserted to uphold some positive truth. But it may also be a 
duty to state briefly and respectfully why, after a careful con- 
sideration of such a criticism, the present writer is unable 
to recognise any sufficient reason for withdrawing what he 
has ventured to say upon the subject. Unquestionably, as 
Mr. Gladstone urges, it is allowable in principle to teach only 
a portion of revealed truth, under circumstances which would 
render a larger measure of instruction likely to perplex and 
repel the learners.. But then such teaching must be loyally 
consistent with the claims of that portion of the truth, which is, 
provisionally, left untaught ; and this condition does not appear 


a ‘Ecce Homo,’ by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. Strahan & Co. 
London, 1868. [Reprinted from ‘Good Words.’ ] 


510 Note A. On ‘Lives’ of Our Lord. 


to be satisfied by ‘Ecce Homo,’ if it be, as we may hope, only a 
preparation for a second volume which will assert in plain lan- 
guage the Deity of our Adorable Lord. The crucial chapter on 
the Temptation altogether ignores our Lord’s true and higher 
Personality ; as it also appears to ignore the personal presence 
of the Tempter. ‘What is called Christ’s Temptation is the 
excitement of His Mind which was caused by the nascent con- 
sciousness of supernatural power,’ p. 12. Such a description 
fails altogether to do justice to the real issues involved; it 
might apply with equal propriety to a struggle in the soul of 
an apostolic man. Even if this chapter does uot imply Christ’s 
inward sympathy with outward solicitations to accept a wrong 
choice, it could never have been written by a person who kept 
clearly before his mind the truth of our Lord’s Divinity. 

Mr. Gladstone draws out and insists upon an analogy between 
the original function of the three Synoptic Evangelists in the 
first propagation of the Faith, and the present function of ‘Ecce 
Homo.’ But this analogy would appear to be disturbed by the 
following considerations. First, there is nothing in ‘Ecce Homo’ 
which corresponds to the great Christological texts in the Synop- 
tists. To these texts Mr. Gladstone has indeed referred, but 
they do not readily harmonize with his representation of the 
gradual unveiling of Christ’s Person. Indeed they teach a doc- © 
trine of Christ’s Person which is virtually identical with that of 
St.John. Are there any passages in ‘Ecce Homo’ which, like 
St. Matt. xi. 27, or St. Luke x. 22, place the Christological belief 
of the writer beyond reach of question? Secondly, the ethical 
atmosphere of ‘ Kece Homo’ differs very significantly from that 
of the Gospels. The Gospels present us with the Scriptural idea’ 
of Sin, provoking God’s wrath and establishing between God 
and man a state of enmity: and this idea points very urgently— 
at least in a moral universe,—to some awful interposition which’ 
shall bring relief. But the Biblical idea of sin is a vitally 
distinct thing from the impoverished modern conception of 
anti-social vice, in which man and not God is the insulted 
and offended person, and by which the protection of individual 
rights and the well-being of society are held to be of more 
account than the reign of peace and purity within the soul. 
The idea of sin points to a Divine Redeemer : the idea of anti- 
social vice points to an improved system of human education... 
Thirdly, the first and third Evangelists preface their records of 
the Ministry with an account of the Nativity. That account 
clearly attributes a Superhuman Personality to Christ; and thus 


Note B. On the word ‘Elohim’ in the O. T. 511 


it places the subsequent narrative in a light altogether different 
from that suggested by the opening chapter of ‘Ecce Homo.’ And 
the first verse of St. Mark’s Gospel is sufficiently explicit to range 
him as to this matter, side by side with St. Matthew and St. Luke. 

The real needs of our time are more likely to be known to 
public men who come in contact with minds of every kind than 
to private clergymen. But it would have appeared to the 
present writer that an economical treatment of the Faith which 
might have been possible and natural in the first age of its pro- 
mulgation, must fail of its effect at the present day. Whether 
men believe the Gospel or not, its real substance and con- 
tents are now fairly before the world; and it is increas- 
ingly felt that the question whether Christ is or is not God, 
is really identical with the question of His moral character. 
On this account the reticence of the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ still 
appears to the present writer to be a matter for regret ; 
although he gratefully admits that Mr. Gladstone’s commentary 
will have gone far to make the work which has suggested it, as 
useful to the cause of truth, as, with characteristic generosity, 
Mr. Gladstone believes that work to be, if read without the aid 
of so happy an interpretation. 


NOTE B, on Lecture II. 


The word ‘ Elohim’ is used in the Old Testament— 


(1) Of the One True God, as in Deut. iv. 35, 1 Kings xviii. 
21, etc., where it has the article ; and without the article, 
Gen. 1. 2, xli. 38 ; Exod. xxxi. 3, xxxv. 31; Numb. xxiv. 
2, ete. 


(2) Of false gods, as Exod. xii. 12; 2 Chron. xxviii. 23; 
Josh, xxiv. 15; Judg. vi. 10, ete. 


(3) Of judges to whom a person or matter is brought, as 
representing the Divine Majesty in the theocracy, yet not 
in the singular, Exod. xxi. 6, xxii. 7, 8, (in Deut. xix. 17 
it is said in the like case that the parties ‘shall stand 
before the Lorp,’ mm) ; and in allusion to the passages in 
Exodus, Ps. Ixxxii. 1, 6, ‘Recte Abarbenel observavit, 

_judices et magistratus nusquam vocari D7>x nisi respectu 
loci judicii, quod ibi Dei judicia exerceant.’ (Ges. ) 


512 Note C. On Our Lord’s Temptation. 


(4) There is no case in which the word appears from the 
context to be certainly applied, even collectively, to super- 
human beings external to the Divine Essence. ‘Nullus 
exstat locus,’ says Gesenius, ‘in quo hee significatio vel 
necessaria vel pre ceeteris apta sit.’ In Ps. lxxxii. 1, the 
word is explained by verses 2 and 6 of the ‘sons of God,’ 
i.e. judges ; cf. especially verse 8. Yet in Ps. xevii. 7, the 
LXX, Vulg., Syr. translate ‘angels ;’ the Chaldee para- 
phrases ‘ the worshippers of idols ; in Ps, exxxviii. 1, the 
LXX and Vulg. render ‘ angels,’ the Chald. ‘ judges,’ the 
Syr. ‘kings ;’ in Ps. vill. 2, the Chald. too renders ‘ angels,’ 
and is followed by Rashi, Kimchi, and Abenezra (who 
quotes Elahin, Dan. ii. 11}, and others, It is possible that 
the earlier Jewish writers had a traditional knowledge that 
tors might be taken as ONDN7I2, Job i. 6; ii. 1; xxxviii. 
17, and M>x72. 


(5) But, however this may be, it remains certain that Elohim 


is nowhere used with the singular of any except Almighty 
God. 


NOTE C, on Lecture IV. 


On our Lord’s Temptation, viewed in its bearing 
upon His Person. 


The history of our Lord’s temptation has been compared 
to an open gateway, through which Socinianism may enter 
at will to take possession of the Gospel History. This language 
proceeds upon a mistaken idea of what our Lord’s temptation 
really was. 

A. How far could Jesus Christ be ‘tempted’? How far 
could any suggestion of Satan act upon His Manhood ἢ 


1. Here we must distinguish between 


(a) Direct temptation to moral evil, 1. 6. an appeal to 8 
capacity of self-will which might be quickened into 
active disobedience to the Will of God; and 


(8) What may be termed indirect temptation, that 18, 
an appeal to instincts per se innocent, as belonging to 
man in his unfallen state, which can make obedience 
wear the form of a painful effort or sacrifice. 


Note C. On Our Lord’s 7: vmptation. 513 


2. Now Jesus Christ, according to the historians of the 
Temptation, was— 


(2) Emmanuel, St. Matt. 1. 23. That this word is used 
by St. Matthew to mean ‘God és with us,’ as a title of 
Christ, like ‘Jehovah nissi, appears partly from the 
parallel of Isa. ix. 6, partly from the preceding αὐτός 
(v. 22), used with reference to Jesus. Mary’s Son is 
to be Jesus, not as witnessing to a Divine Saviour 

» external to Himself (as was the case when Joshua bore 
the name), but as being Himself God the Saviour. 


(8) Υἱὸς Θεοῦ, St. Luke i. 35. This title is directly con- 
nected with our Lord’s supernatural Birth, and so, al- 
though applied to His Manhood (τὸ γεννώμενον), yet 
implies a pre-existent superhuman Personality in Him. 


3. This Union of the Divine and Human Natures in Christ 
was not fatal to the full perfection of either. In particular 
it did not destroy in Christ’s Manhood those limitations which 
belong properly to creaturely existence. A limitation of know- 
ledge in Christ’s Human Intelligence would correspond to a 
limitation of power in His Human Will. 

But it was inconsistent with the presence of anything in 
Christ’s Manhood that could contradict however slightly the 
Essence of the Perfect Moral Being, in other words, the Holi- 
ness of God. This would have been the case with falsehood in 
Christ’s Human Intelligence, or with any secret undeveloped 
propensity to self-will, that is (in a creature), to moral evil, in 
Christ’s Human Will. If the Incarnate Christ could have erred 
or sinned; the Incarnation, we may dare to say, would have 
been a phantom. 

The connection between Christ’s Personal Godhead, and the 
complete sinlessness of His Manhood was well understood by — 
Christian antiquity. Thus Tertullian: ‘Solus homo sine pec- 
cato Christus, quia et Deus Christus’ (De An. ὁ. 13). Thus in 
the synodical letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Paulus of 
Samosata, it is argued that εἰ μὴ yap ἢν ὁ Χριστὸς αὐτὸς ὁ Sv Θεὸς 
Δόγος, οὐκ ἠδύνατο εἶναι ἀναμάρτητος. Οὐδὲις γὰρ ἀναμάρτητος εἰ μὴ 
εἷς ὁ Χριστὸς ὡς καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ τὸ “Ayov Πνεῦμα 
(Labbé, Cone. i. p. 855). So St. Augustine, still more explicitly, 
teaches: ‘Ut autem Mediator Dei et hominum homo Christus 
Jesus non faceret propriam, que Deo adversa est, voluntatem, 
non erat tanttim homo, sed Deus et homo: per quam mirabilem 

1,1 ᾿ 


514 Lote C. On Our Lord’s Temptation. 


singularemque gratiam humana in illo sine peccato ullo posset 
esse natura. Propter hoc ergd ait, Descendi de cceelo, non ut 
faciam voluntatem meam, sed voluntatem ejus qui me misit 
(Joh. vi. 38): ut ea caussa esset tantee obedientiee que omnind 
siné ullo peccato esset hominis que gerebat, quid de ccelo de- 
scenderat ; hoc est, non tantum homo, vertm etiam Deus erat’ 
(Contr. Sermon. Arianor., 6. vii. c. 6). Again, ‘Ista nativitas 
profectd gratuita conjunxit in unitate persone hominem Deo, 
carnem Verbo....Neque enim metuendum erat, ne isto in- 
effabili: modo in unitatem persone ἃ Verbo Deo natura humana 
suscepta, nullum in se motum male voluntatis admitteret’ (De 
Correp. et Grat., c. xi. ἢ. 30). Again, he gives as a reason for 
the Divine Incarnation, ‘ Ut intelligant homines per eandem 
gratiam se justificari ἃ peccatis, per quam factum est ut homo 
Christus nullum habere posset peccatwm’ (Enchir. ad Laur., 
c. 36, n, 11 ; compare Ench. 6. 40. See also the passages from 
St. Athanasius and St. Cyril Alex. qu. by Petav., De Incarnat., 
lib. xi. c. 10, ὁ 6). Theodorus of Mopsuestia was anathematized 
at the Fifth Gicumenical Council of Constantinople, a.v. 553, 
for maintaining among other things that our Lord was ὑπὸ 
πάθων ψυχῆς καὶ τῶν τῆς σαρκὸς ἐπιθυμιῶν ἐνοχλούμενον, καὶ τῶν 
χειρόνων κατὰ μικρὸν χωριζόμενον, καὶ οὕτως ἐκ προτροπῆς ἔργων 
βελτιώθεντα, καὶ ἐκ πολιτείας ἄμωμον καθίσταντα (Con. Const., ii. 
can. xii.; Labbé, v. p. 575). The language of Theodorus was 
felt to ignore the consequences of the Personal Union of the 
Two Natures: it was practically Nestorianism. 

Our Lord’s Manhood then, by the unique conditions of its 
existence, was believed to be wholly exempt from any pro- 
pensity to, or capacity of, sinful self-will. When, as in the 
temptation on the mountain, He was beset by solicitations 
to evil from without, He met them at once in a manner which 
shewed that no inward element of His Human Nature even felt 
their power. For, as St. Athanasius says, He was δίχα σαρκικῶν 
θελημάτων καὶ λογισμῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, ἐν εἰκόνι καινότητος (Contr. 
Apollinar., lib. ii. 6, 10). The sharpest arrows of the tempter 
struck Him, but, like darts lighting upon a hard polished 
surface, they glanced aside. Moreover, as it would seem, the 
Personal Union of the Two Natures in our Lord involved, at 
least, the sight of the Beatific Vision by our Lord’s Humanity : 
and if we cannot conceive of the blessed as sinning while they 
worship around the throne, much less can we conceive it in 
One in Whom ‘dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.’ 
Thus to any direct temptation to evil He was simply inaccessible, 


Note C. On Our Lord’s Temptation. 515 


to Whom alone the words fully belong, ‘I have set God always 
before Me, for He is on My right Hand, therefore I shall not 
fall.’ ! 

4. But the Personal Union of our Lord’s Manhood with His 
Godhead did not exempt It from simple human instincts, such 
as, for example, a shrinking from bodily pain. For, ‘As Man’s 
Will, so the Will of Christ hath two several kinds of operation ; 
the one natural or necessary, whereby it desireth simply what- 
soever is good in itself, and shunneth as generally all things 
which hurt ; the other deliberate, when we therefore embrace 
things as good, because the age of understanding judgeth them 
good to that end which we simply desire.... These different 
inclinations of the will considered, the reason is easy how 
in Christ there might grow desires, seeming but being not in 
deed opposite, either the one of them unto the other or either 
of them unto the Will of God’ (Hooker, E.P. v. 48, 9; ef. 
St. John xii. 27). Upon our Lord’s Human Will in its inchoate 
or rudimentary stage of Desire, uninformed by Reason, an ap- 
proaching trial might so far act, as a temptation, as, for instance, 
to produce a wish that obedience might be compatible with 
escape from suffering. But it could not produce, even for one 
moment, any wish to be free from the law of obedience itself ; 
since such a wish could only exist where the capacity for sinful 
self-will was not absolutely excluded. The utmost that tempta- 
tion could do with our Lord, was to enhance the sacrificial cha- 
racter of obedience, by appealing to an innocent human instinct 
which ran counter to its actual requirements. 

B. This statement of the matter will perhaps suggest some 
questions. 

1. Is it altogether consistent with the Scripture language 
which represents our Lord as κατὰ πάντα τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοιωθείς 
(Heb. ii. 17); as memetpapevos κατὰ πάντα καθ' ὁμοιότητα (Heb. iv. 
15); as One Who ἔμαθεν ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἔπαθε τὴν ὑπακοήν (Heb. v. 7) ! 

Yes. For Holy Scripture qualifies this language by describing 
Him as χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας (Heb. iv. 15); as ὅσιος, ἄκακος, ἀμίαντος, 
κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν (Heb. vii. 26); and by connect- 
ing His manifestation as the Saviour with the entire absence of 
any sinful element within Himself: ἐκεῖνος ἐφανερώθη, iva τὰς ἁμαρ- 
tias ἡμῶν ἄρῃ, καὶ ἁμαρτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστι (τ St.John 111. 5). It 
is clear that Holy Scripture denies the existence, not merely of any 
sinful thinking or acting, but of any ultimate roots and sources 
of sin, of any propensities or inclinations, however latent and 
rudimentary, towards sin, in. the Incarnate Christ. When 

Ll2 


516 Note C. On Our Lord’s Temptation. 


therefore Scripture speaks of His perfect assimilation to us, 
to our condition, our trials, our experiences, this language 
must be understood of physical and mental pain in all their 
forms. It cannot be understood of any moral assimilation ; 
He is, according to Scripture, the absolutely Sinless One; we 
are, by nature, corrupt. | 

2. ‘Is this account consistent with the exigencies. of our 
Lord’s Redemptive Work?’ Did He conquer sin for us, when 
His victory was won under conditions differing from our own ἢ 

Certainly. He is not less truly representative of our race, 
because in Him it has recovered its perfection. His victory is 
none the less real and precious, because, morally speaking, it 
was inevitable. Nay, this perfect internal sinlessness, which 
rendered Christ inaccessible to direct temptation to evil, was ~ 
itself essential to His redemptive relationship to the human 
family. It accordingly was deliberately secured to Him by His 
Virgin-Birth, which cut: off the entail of inward. corruption. 
He could not have been the Sinless Victim, offered freely for 
a sinful world, δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων (1 St. Pet. iii. 18), unless 
He had been thus superior to the moral infirmities of His 
brethren. 

3. But does not such an account impair the full form of our 
Lord’s example ¢ 

Certainly an example is in a sense more powerful when 
it is set by one who is under exactly the same moral circum- 
stances as ourselves. And, if Christ our Lord had been a 
sinner, or at any rate had had sinful dispositions within Him, 
He would so far have been more entirely what we really 
are; although He would have been unable to redeem us. 
If, like His apostle, He had beheld ‘another law in His 
members warring against the law of His mind,’ He would 
have come not in ‘the likeness of sinful flesh,’ but in flesh 
that was actually sinful, and so exactly like our own, But 
then He took our nature upon Him, precisely in order to 
expel sin altogether from it, and thus to shew us of what it was 
capable, by shewing us Himself. The absence of an absolute 
identity of moral circumstances between Him and ourselves, is 
more than compensated by our possession of what else we could 
not have had, a Perfect Model of Humanity. We gain in the 
perfection of the Moral Ideal thus placed before us, to say 
nothing of the perfection of the Mediator between God and 
Man, more than we can lose in moral vigour, upon discovering 
that His obedience was wrought out in a Nature unlike our 


~ 


Note 7). Unity of the Father and the Son. 517 


‘own in the one point of absolute purity. And by His grace, 


we ourselves are supernaturalized, and ‘can do all things.’ 

4. But does not such an account reflect upon the moral 
greatness of our Lord? Is not an obedience ‘which could not 
but be,’ less noble than an obedience which triumphs over 
pronounced disinclination to obey? In other words, does not 
this account practically deny Christ’s moral liberty ἢ 
No. The highest liberty does not imply the moral capacity 
of doing wrong. God is the one perfectly free Being ; yet God 
cannot sin. The free movement of a moral being, who has not 
fallen, is not an oscillation between sin and moral truth ; it 
is a steady adherence to moral truth. To God sin is im- 
possible. To created natures sin is not impossible; but it 
is always, at first, a violation of the law of their being; they 
must do violence to themselves in order to sin. So it was in 
Eden ; so it is, in its degree, with the first lie a man tells now. 
Our Lord’s inaccessibility to sin was the proof and glory of His 
Moral Perfection. ‘Nonne de Spiritu Sancto et Virgine Maria 
Dei Filius unicus natus est, non carnis concupiscentia sed 
singulari Dei munere? Numquid metuendum fuit, ne accedente 
etate homo ille libero peccaret arbitrio? An ideo in illo non 
libera voluntas erat; ac non tantd magis erat, quanto magis 
peccato servire non poterat?’ (S. Aug., De Predestinatione 
Sanctorum, ¢. 15, ἢ. 30.) 

The real temptation of a Sinless Christ is not less precious 
to us than the temptation of a Christ who could have sinned, 
would be. It forms a much truer and more perfect contrast to 
the failure of our first parent. It occupies a chief place in that 
long series of acts of condescension which begins with the 
Nativity, and which ends on the Cross. It is a lesson for all 
times as to the true method of resisting the tempter. Finally, 
it is the source of that strength whereby all later victories over 
Satan have been won: Christ, the sinless One, has conquered 
the enemy in His sin-stained members. ‘By Thy Temptation, 
good Lord, deliver us.’ 


“~ 


NOTE D, on Lecture IV. 


On ‘Moral’ explanations of the Unity of the Father 
and the Son. 


Referring to a passage which is often quoted to destroy the 
dogmatic significance of St. John x. 30, Professor Bright has well 
observed that ‘the comparison in St.John xvii. 21, and the 


518 Note LE. The Presbyter Fohn and the Apostle. 


unity of Christians with each other in the Son has sometimes 
been abused in the interests of heresy.’ ‘The second unity,’ it 
has been said, ‘is simply moral ; therefore the first is so.’ But 
the second is not simply moral ; it is, in its basis, essential, for 
we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones ; it 
is the mysterious incorporation into His Sacred Manhood which 
causes the oneness of affections and of will. Thus also in the 
higher sphere, the Father and the Son are one in purpose, 
because They are consubstantial. ‘Those,’ says Olshausen on 
St. John x. 30, ‘who would entertain the hypothesis—at once 
Arian, Socinian, and Rationalistic—that ἕν «iva refers only to 
unity of will, not of nature, should not forget that true unity of 
will without unity of nature is something inconceivable. Hence, 
if Christ speaks of unity of will between Himself and His 
people, this can subsist only so far as such unity of will has 
been rendered possible to them by a previous communication 
of His nature’ (Eighteen Sermons of St. Leo, p. 132). 


NOTE E, on Lecture V. 
‘The Presbyter John’ and the Apostle. 


Who was the author of the Second and Third Epistles attri- 
buted to St. John the Evangelist in the present Canon of the 
New Testament ? 


I. The existence of a ‘Presbyter John,’ a contemporary of the 
Apostle, depends on the following evidence :— 


(i.) Papias in Eus. iii. 39 names him with Aristion separately 
from St. John, as a disciple of the Lord. Eusebius adds 
that this confirms the report of (a) two Johns in Asia who 
had been in close relations with our Lord, (8) two tombs 
at Ephesus both bearing the name of John. 


(ii.) Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eus. vii. 25, ascribes the 
authorship of the Apocalypse to ‘the Presbyter John,’ 
as Eusebius himself was inclined to do. Dionysius repeats 
the story of the two tombs. 

(iii.) The ‘Apostolical Constitutions’ (vii. 47) says that a 
second John was made Bishop of Ephesus by the Apostle 
St. John. 


(iv.) St. Jerome (Catal. Script. 6.9 and 18) makes a state- 
ment to the same effect : he says that John the Presbyter’s 


Note E. The Presbyter Fohn and the Apostle. 519 


tomb is still shewn at Ephesus, although some maintained 
that both tombs were memorials of St. John the Evan- 
gelist. 


Dr. Dollinger admits that John Presbyter lived as a contem- 
porary of the Evangelist, and that his grave, could be seen at 
Ephesus next to St. John’s. (First Age of the Church, p. 113, 
Eng. trans., 2nd edit.) 


IT. But this admission would not necessarily involve the 
- further admission that the Presbyter John was the author of 
the Second and Third Epistles ascribed to the Apostle. All 
that can be advanced in favour of the Presbyter’s authorship is 
stated by Ebrard (Einleitung); the ordinary belief being de- 
fended by Liicke, Huther, Wordsworth, and Alford. Among 
reasons for it are the following :— 


i. The argument from style. The differences upon which 
Ebrard lays such stress may fairly be accounted for by the 
distinct character and object of the two Epistles ; while their 
general type of language and thought is unmistakeably Johan- 
nean. Bretschneider denied that the Apostle had written any 
one of the three Epistles. Yet he had no doubt of the fact 
that all three had been written by a single author. 


ii. Church-tradition. 


(a) The great authority, in this matter especially, of St. Ire- 
neus ; Her. 1. 16.3; ili. 16.8. (See Alford.) Neither 
St. Irenzeus nor Polycrates had ever heard, it would ap- 
pear, of the Presbyter John, which shews at least that 
he cannot have been an eminent person in the Church. 


(8) That of Clement and Dionysius of Alexandria (see 
Alford); Aurelius, quoted by St. Cyprian in Cone. 
Carth.; St. Jerome, cf. Ep. 2 ad Paulinum, Ep. ad 


Evagrium. 


(y) On the other hand, Origen was doubtful about the 
authorship as about many other things. (Eus. vi. 25.) 
The two Epistles are not even mentioned by Tertullian 
or Theodoret. ‘They were rejected, together with the 
other Catholic Epistles, by Theodore of Mopsuestia. 


(8) The late reception of the two Epistles into the canon 
of so many Churches may be accounted for, according 
to Ebrard, by (1) their private character; (2) the fact 


520 Note F. The Worship of F¥esus Christ 


that one was addressed to a woman; (3) the amount 
of matter in them common to the first Epistle (?). The 
verdict of the Muratorian Fragm. is doubtful. The 
Peschito probably did not contain either. Eusebius 
reckons them among the Antilegomena; yet his own 
opinion appears in Dem. Ev. iii. 5. (See Alford.) 


iii. Nothing against the apostolic authorship can be inferred 
from the title ὁ πρεσβύτερος, St. Paul calls himself ὁ πρεσβύτης 
(Philem. 9), and St. Peter ὁ συμπρεσβύτερος (τ Pet. v. 1). 
Probably ‘the Presbyter’ John did not assume the title until 
after the death of the Apostle. St. John may have used it 
in his private correspondence either to hint at his age, or as 
a formal title the force of which was at once recognized and 
admitted. Surely the Presbyter would have added to ὁ πρεσ- 
Birepos, his name Ἰωάννης, An Apostle could afford to omit 
his name. The authority too, of which the writer of the third 
Epistle is conscious in his reference to Diotrephes, seems incon- 
sistent with the supposition of a non-apostolical authorship. 


NOTE F, on Lecture VII. 


The worship of Jesus Christ as prescribed by the Authorized 
Services of the Church of England. 


A. In a letter to the Editor of the ‘Times,’ dated August 9, 
and published in that journal on September 26, 1866, Dr. Colenso 
writes as follows :— 

‘IT have drawn attention to the fact that out of 180 collects 
and prayers contained in the Prayer-book, only three or four at 
most are addressed to our Lord, the others being all addressed 
through Christ to Almighty God. 1 have said that there are 
also ejaculations in the Litany and elsewhere addressed to 
Christ. But I have shewn that the whole spirit and the general 
practice of our Liturgy manifestly tend to discourage such wor- 
ship and prayer, instead of making it the ‘foundation-stone ἢ 
of common worship.’ 

‘It appears,’ Dr. Colenso further observes, ‘that the practice 
in question is not based on any Scriptural or Apostolical 
authority, but is the development of a later age, and has very 
greatly increased within the Church of England during the 
last century, beyond what (as the Prayer-book shews) was the 
rule at the time of the Reformation—chiefly, as I believe, 
through the use of unauthorized hymns.’ | 


an the Services of the Church of England. 521 


1. Now here it is to be observed, first of all, that prayer to 


-our Lord is either right or wrong. If it is right, if Jesus Christ 


does mdeed hear and answer prayer, and prayer to Him is 
agreeable to the Divine Will, then three or four hundred collects 
addressed to Him (supposing the use of them not to imply a 
lack of devotion to the Eternal Father and to the Holy Spirit) 
are quite as justifiable as three or four. If such prayer is wrong, 
if Jesus Christ does not hear it, and it is opposed to the real 
Will of God, then a single ejaculation, a single Christe Eleison, 
carries with it the whole weight of a wrongful act of worship, 
and is immoral, as involving a violation of the rights of God. 
Dr. Colenso says that prayer to Jesus Christ is ‘not based on 


‘Scriptural or Apostolical authority, but is the development of a 


later age.’ He does not mean to assert that ‘development’ is a 
sufficient justification of a Christian doctrine or practice ; since 
he is assigning’a reason for the discouragement which he feels 
it to be his duty to offer to the practice of prayer to our Lord. 
But, if his reason be valid, ought it not to make any one such 
prayer utterly out of the question? It is not easy to understand 
the principle upon which, after admitting that ‘three or four 
Collects’ in the Prayer-book ae addressed to our Lord, Dr. Co- 
lenso adds, ‘I am prepared to use the Liturgy of the Church of 
England as it stands.’ 

To a clear mind, unembarrassed by the difficulties of an unten- 
able position, this painful inconsistency would be impossible. 
Either Jesus Christ is God or He is not; there is no third 
alternative. If He is God, then natural piety makes prayer to 
Him inevitable: to call Him God is to call Him adorable. 
If He is not God, then one-tenth part of the worship which 
the Church of England in her authorized formularies offers to 
Him is just as idolatrous as a hundred litanies, such as ours, 
would be. Dr. Colenso would not explain his use of ‘ Christ, 
have mercy upon us’ as Roman Catholics explain an ‘Ora pro 
nobis.’ If one such ‘ejaculation’ is right, then prayer to our 
Lord for an hour together is right also. In short, it is not a 
question of more or fewer prayers to Christ; the question is, 
Can we rightly worship Him at all ? 

2. Dr. Colenso maintains that ‘the whole spirit and the 
general practice of our Liturgy manifestly tend to discourage’ 
prayer to our Lord. 

What is meant by the ‘whole spirit’ of our Liturgy? If this 
expression is intended to describe some sublimated essence, 
altogether distinct from the actual words of the Prayer-book, 


522 Note F. The Worship of Fesus Christ 


it is of course very difficult to say what it may or may not 
‘tend’ to ‘discourage.’ But if the ‘whole spirit’ of a document 
be its intellectual drift and purpose as gathered from its actual 
words, and from the history of its formation, then we may say 
that Dr. Colenso’s assertion is entirely opposed to the facts of 
the case. 

(2) The devotional addresses to our Lord Jesus Christ alone 
in the Church Service are as follows :— 


Daily Service, Morning and Evening— 


Verses of the Te Deum . ; . ° Ἶ 16 
‘Christ, have merey upon us’ . . ‘ 2 
Prayer of St.Chrysostom , ᾿ ‘ : 2 
Litany— 
Invocation, ‘O God the Son’. 2 . ὃ Ι 
‘Remember not, Lord’ . ° . Α . I 
Deprecations ‘ . . . . . 5 
Obsecrations . : . ‘ 2 
‘In all time of our tribulation’ . , < I 
Petitions . Ἂ . 21 
‘Son of God, we beseech Thee,’ ste. ‘ ὁ Ι 
“Ὁ Lamb of God, That,’ ete. > . F 2 
‘O Christ, hear us’ ; i . . Ι 
‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ ; Ἶ > I 
Preces, ‘ From our enemies’ 8 Ἶ . 10 
Prayer of St.Chrysostom . . . . Ι 


Collects— 


Third Sunday in Advent . . , . Ι 

St. Stephen’s Day . . ὁ . . : I 

First Sunday in Lent . . . . . I 
Communion Office— 

Of the three parts of the Gloria in Excelsis . 2 
Solemnization of Matrimony— 

‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ . . : Ι 
Visitation of the Sick— 

‘Remember not, Lord’ ν : ς ‘ I 

‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ ; I 


“Ὁ Saviour of the world, ΒΟ by Thy. Cross’ . I 


in the Services of the Church of England. 523 


Burial of the Dead— , 

‘In the midst of life,’ ete. ; ‘ ὃ ὃ Ι 

‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ . ‘ ‘ I 
Churching of Women— 

‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ ᾿ > ‘ I 
Commination — 

‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ ‘ ; ; I 


_ Prayers to be used at Sea— 


‘O blessed Saviour, That didst save’ . ‘ I 
‘Christ, have mercy upon us’ : : : I 
‘O Christ, hear us’ . : I 


83 


(8) Devotional addresses to our Lord conjointly with the 
Eternal Father and the Holy Ghost :— 


Daily Morning and Evening Services, not including 


the Psalms—Gloria Patri at least ‘ ‘ 6 
Athanasian Creed—Gloria Patri . ν ° ‘ I 
Litany— 

‘O Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Sones . Ι 

Gloria Patri . 3 ; . : I 
Collect for Trinity Sunday . : ras ; I 
Communion Office— 

Preface for Trinity pocrape ‘ ‘ F ‘ I 

Ter Sanctus . . ‘ . I 
Matrimony—Gloria Patri. : I 
Visitation of the Sick—Gloria Patri I 
Burial of the Dead—Gloria Patri at least I 
Churching of Women—Gloria Patri I 
Commination—Gloria Patri ὃ ς Σ I 
Psalter—Gloria Patri . . ‘ oS) Nel eee 


Prayers to be used at Sea— 


Gloria Patri . ἷ 4 
‘God the Father, God the Son,’ ete. : P I 


524 Note F. The Worship of Fesus Christ 


Besides this, there are at the end of Collects seven ascriptions 
of Glory, addressed to Christ our Lord with the Father and the 
Holy Spirit. In one Collect (Ordering of Deacons) such an 
ascription is addressed to Christ alone. 

(y) It should further be added, that in each of the Ordina- 
tion Services the whole of that large part of the Litany which 
is addressed to our Lord is repeated, with the exception οὗ 
the Prayer of St. Chrysostom; while in the Doxology, twice 
repeated, at the end of the Veni Creator, Christ is praised with 
the Father and the Holy Ghost. Nor should the solemn Bene- 
dictions in the Name of the Three Blessed Persons which occur 
in the Communion, the Confirmation, and the Marriage Services, 
be forgotten in estimating the devotional attitude of the Church 
towards our Lord. For a view of the real amount of change 
in the Prayer-book which would be necessary in order to expel 
from it the worship of our Lord, see ‘The Book of Common 
Prayer of the Church of England adapted for general use in 
other Protestant Churches.’ London, William Pickering, 1852. 
This compilation appears to have been the work of a Socinian ; 
as those Protestant Dissenters who believe in the Godhead of 
our Lord would regard most of its ‘adaptations’ as shocking 
to their dearest convictions. 

(5) Of the Collects for Sundays or Holy-days now addressed 
to the Father, only two (those for the Fourth Sunday in Advent 
and Sunday after Ascension) were, in the old Ritual, prayers to 
Christ. Yet of these, it happens that the former was, in its 
original form, as it stood in the Sacramentary of Gelasius, ad- 
dressed to the Father (Muratori, Lit. Rom. i. 680): and the 
latter was not originally a Collect, but an antiphon for the second 
vespers of the Ascension, which Ven. Bede sang shortly before 
his death. Another prayer, beginning ‘ Hear us,’ in the Visita- 
tion Office, was a prayer to our Lord until 1661. On the other 
hand, of the three Collects now addressed to our Lord, that for 
the First Sunday in Lent dates from 1549, that for the Third 
Sunday in Advent from 1661, while that for St. Stephen’s Day, 
originally a prayer to the Father, became a prayer to the Son 
in 1549, and was enlarged and intensified, as such, in 1661. 
The Office for Use at Sea, containing prayers to Christ, also 
belongs to 1661. 

In order to do justice to the spirit of the Reformers of the 
sixteenth century on this subject, two facts should be noted. 

1. Prayers to our Lord abound in the semi-authorized Primers 
which were put out at that period. In Edward the Sixth’s 


im the Services of the Church of England. 525 


Primer of 1553 there are sixteen. In Elizabeth's Primer of 
1559 there are twenty-two. In one portion of the Preces Pri- 
vatee of 1564 there are twenty-one. In the ‘Christian Prayers’ 
of 1578 there are fifty-five. ) 

2. On the other hand, from all of these manuals, as from the 
public services of the Church, all addresses to any created being 
were rigorously excluded. And one effect of the expulsion of 
antiphons and hymns addressed to the Blessed Virgin and other 
Saints from the Liturgy of the Church of England, has been to 
throw the praises, prayers, and adorations, which the Church of 
England publicly addresses to our Lord Jesus Christ, into a 
sharper prominence than belonged to such prayers in pre- 
Reformation times, or than belongs to them now in the Church 
of Rome. 

The old Puritanism would have shrunk with horror from 
the discouragement of prayer to our Lord. Witness the speech 
of Sir E. Dering in the Long Parliament of 1641, after an order 
of the House of Commons forbidding men to bow at the Name 
of Jesus :— 

‘Was it ever heard before, that any men of any religion, in 
any age, did ever cut short or abridge any worship, upon any 
occasion, to their God? Take heed, Sir, and let us all take heed, 
whither we are going. If Christ be Jesus, if Jesus be God, all 
reverence, exterior as well as interior, is too little for Him. 
I hope we are not going up the back stairs to Socinianism !’ 
(Southey, Bock of the Church, Ρ. 462.) 


τ By The ΩΣ of Christ our Lord in “the Litany τὰ lately 
been explained by a very popular and accomplished writera, 
upon principles, which, if they could be admitted, would deny to 
it the significance assigned to it in these Lectures. After com- 
menting on the historical origin of Litany-worship in the fifth 
century, and on the compilation of our own Litany at the 
Reformation, the Dean of Westminster observes that the Litany 
forms the most remarkable exception to the ordinary practice 
of the Church, in respect of addressing prayers to God the 
Father. The Dean then proceeds :— 
‘It is not perhaps certain that all the petitions are addressed 
to Christ our Saviour); but, at any rate, a large portion are so 


®* The Litany,’ by the Dean of Westminster. In ‘ Good Words’ for July, 


1868, p. 423. 
bs We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord,’ is in the older Litanies addtdiced 
to God (Martene, iii. 52), and so it would seem to be in some of the petitions 
in the English Litany. But perhaps the most natural interpretation, is to | 
regard the whole as addressed to Christ. (Note in ‘Good Words;’) a Ὁ , 
ij 7 att 4 N ἂν" 


Ἢ at a ἐν" 


526 Note F. The Worship of Fesus Christ 


addressed. It stands in this respect almost isolated amidst the 
rest of the Prayer Book. Now, what is the reason—what is 
the defence for this? Many excellent persons have at times 
felt a scruple at such a deviation from the precepts of Scripture 
and from the practice of ancient Christendom. What are we 
to say to explain it? The explanation is to be sought in the 
original circumstances under which the history was introduced. 
When the soul is overwhelmed with difficulties and distresses, 
like those which caused the French Christians in the fifth cen- | 
tury to utter their piteous supplications te God—it seems to 
be placed in a different posture from that of common life. The 
invisible world is brought much nearer—the language, the 
feelings of the heart become more impassioned, more vehement, 
more urgent. The inhabitants, so to speak, of the world of 
spirits seem to become present to our spirits; the words of 
common intercourse seem unequal to convey the thoughts which 
are labouring to express themselves As in poetry, so in sorrow, 
and for a similar reason, our ordinary forms of speech are 
changed. So it was in the two exceptions which occur in the 
New Testament. When Stephen was in the midst of his 
enemies, and no help for him left on earth, then “the heavens 
were opened; and he saw the Son of Man standing on the 
right hand of God,” and thus seeing Him, he addressed his 
petition straight to him—*“ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,—Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge.” When St. Paul was deeply 
oppressed by the thorn in the flesh, then again his Lord ap- 
peared to him (we know not how), and then to Him, present 
to the eye whether of the body or the spirit (as on the road to 
Damascus), the Apostle addressed the threefold supplication, 
“Let this depart from me,” and the answer, in like manner, to 
the ear of the body or spirit, was direct—* My grace is suffi- 
cient for thee.” So is it in the Litany. Those who wrote it, 
and we who use it, stand for the moment in the place of Stephen 
and Paul. We knock, as it were, more earnestly at the gates 
of heaven—we “thrice beseech the Lord”—and the veil is for 
a moment withdrawn, and the Son of Man is there standing to 
receive our prayer. In that rude time, when the Litany was 
first introduced, they who used it would fain have drawn back 
the veil further still. It was in the Litanies of the Middle 
Ages that we first find the invocations not only of Christ our 
Saviour, but of those earthly saints who have departed with 
him into that other world. These we have now, with a wise 
caution, ceased to address. But the feeling which induced 


am the Services of the Church of England. 527 


men to call upon them is the same in kind as that which runs 
through this exceptional service ; namely, the endeavour, under 
the pressure of strong emotion and heavy calamity, to bring 
ourselves more nearly into the presence of the Invisible. Christ 
and the saints at such times seemed to come out like stars, 
which in the daylight cannot be seen, but in the darkness of 
the night were visible. The saints, like falling stars or passing 
meteors, have again receded into the darkness. We by increased 
reflection have been brought to feel that of them and of their 
state we know not enough to justify this invocation of their 
help. But Christ, the Lord and King of the Saints, still re- 
mains—the Bright and Morning Star, more visible than all the 
rest, more bright and more cheering, as the darkness of the 
night becomes deeper, as the cold becomes more and more chill. 

‘We justly acquiesce in the practice of our Reformed Church, 
which has excluded those lesser mediators. But this one 
remarkable exception of the Litany in favour of addressing our 
prayers to the one great Divine Mediator may be surely allowed, 
if we remember that it is an exception, and understand the 
grounds on which it is made. In the rest of the Prayer Book 
we follow the ancient rule, and our Saviour’s express command, 
by addressing our Father only. Here in the Litany, when we 
express our most urgent needs, we may well deviate from that 
general rule, and invite the ever-present aid of Jesus Christ, at 
once the Son of Man and Son of Gods.’ 

1. Now, first of all, it cannot be admitted that any ‘ defence’ 
or ‘explanation’ of the worship of our Lord in the Litany 
ought to be required by any person who sincerely believes in 
Christ’s Godhead ; while as to those who do not believe in it, the 
Dean’s explanation does not touch the real point of their objec- 
tion. If ‘many excellent persons have at times felt a scruple 
at such a deviation from the precepts of Scripture and from the 
practice of ancient Christendom,’ they ought to have been told 
that their scruple was based on a misapprehension. As to 
Scripture, every precept in the Gospel on the subject is in har- 
mony with and governed by the primal law: ‘Thou shalt wor- 
ship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’ This 
precept is at once positive and negative: it prescribes the 
adoration of God, and it excludes the adoration of beings ex- 
ternal to the Godhead. The one practical question then is whether 
Jesus Christ is internal to the Divine Essence, or a created 


& ‘Good Words,’ p. 432. 


528 Note δὶ The Worship of Fesus Christ 


being outside It. If the former, then not merely may we adore 
Him: we must. If the latter, then no poetry, no feeling, can 
relax the rule: we dare not. If Christ is God, the Litany 
does not require an apology. If He is only a creature, it does 
not admit of one. 

And as concerns ‘the practice of the ancient Church’ the 
scruple in question is very unnecessary. Certainly, in the 
greatest public act of Christian worship, the Eucharist, the rule 
was, as defined at Carthage, to address prayer to the Father. 
This rule however resulted from the specific belief of the ancient 
Church respecting the Eucharist, namely, that it was a sacrificial 
presentation of Christ, once for all sacrificed on Calvary, to the 
Eternal Father. The rule did not govern ancient Christian 
practice in respect of non-Eucharistic prayer. The Litanies of 
the fifth century did but repeat and expand devotions which 
had long been ancient and popular; such as were the Kyrie 
Eleison and the Gloria in Excelsis ;—both of them containing 
prayers to Christ our Lord, and both ultimately finding their 
way into the Eucharistic Service. Prayer to. our Lord had long 
been the natural resource of the Christian soul. Not to repeat 
examples which have been cited in the text of these lectures, let 
two be instanced which shew that prayer to Christ did not first 
become popular in the ancient Church, when, under the pressure 
of public calamities, Bishop Mamertus instituted Litanies in the 
diocese of Vienne. Such prayer was already the common and 
ancient practice of Christendom, A century earlier St. Athan- 
asius is vindicating his loyalty to Constantius: ‘I had only 
to say,’ he observes, ‘ Let us pray for the safety of the most 
religious Emperor, Constantius Augustus ; and all the people 
immediately cried with one voice, “O Christ, send Thy help 
to Constantius.” And they continued praying for some time.’ 
(Apol. ad Constant. ὃ το.) Again, St. Augustine is describing a 
spontaneous burst of fervid prayer from the Christian multitude 
—They exclaimed, ‘ Exaudi Christe, Augustino vita: and he 
adds—‘ dictum est sexties decies.’ (Ep. 213.) These great fathers 
would no more have thought that prayer to our Lord had to be 
justified before well-informed Christians, than they would have 
hoped to justify it, let us say, to intelligent but unconverted 
Jews. 

2. Dean Stanley’s ‘explanation’ of the worship of our Lord 
in the Litany refers it to ‘difficulties and distresses like those 
which caused the French Christians in the fifth century to utter 
their piteous supplications to God.’ He traces it back to the 


271 the Services of the Church of England. 529 


passion, the vehemence, the urgency of a great sorrow ; to ‘the 
endeavour, under the pressure of strong emotion and heavy 
calamity, to bring ourselves more nearly into the presence of the 
Invisible. Now there is no doubt that calamities, whether 
public or private, do very greatly enlarge and intensify the life 
of prayer in Christian souls. Scripture teaches us, in various 
ways, that this is one of the providentially-intended results of 
such calamities; and upon no point is Scripture more in har- 
mony with experience. But sorrow, of itself, does not make 
the prayers which it multiplies or intensifies either lawful or 
availing. Sorrow may quicken the instincts of superstition not 
less than those of revealed truth. Sorrow, as such, is not 
a revelation ; it does not ensure progress in truth; it may 
bring a Christian more sensibly into God’s Presence ; it may 
throw pagan multitudes at the feet of a debasing and odious 
idol. Whether the practices which it leads us, in our agony, 
to adopt, are wholesome and defensible, must be determined 
independently of it. If a practice is indefensible, on grounds 
of faith or grounds of reason, sorrow cannot consecrate it. 
If it was in any sense or degree wrong to pray to Jesus 
Christ, St. Stephen’s dying agony, and St. Paul’s mental dis- 
tress under the thorn in the flesh, could not justify their 
prayers to Him; if they were right in praying to Him then, 
they were right in praying to Him, as we know St. Paul did 
pray to Him, at other times. If the prayers to our Lord in 
the Litany were really a ‘deviation from the precepts of Scrip- 
ture and from the practice of ancient Christendom,’ then neither 
the difficulties and distresses of Southern France in the fifth 
century, nor the ‘extremity of perplexity»’ which men felt at 
the convulsions. of the Reformation-period, nor any public or 
private sorrows or emotions of modern times, can avail to justify 
such a ‘deviation.’ It is indeed natural for Christians in times 
of sorrow to appeal in prayer to our Lord’s Human sympathies, 
more earnestly than in the brighter hours of life. But assuredly 
if such prayers to Christ are wrong, no amount of mental agony 
ean make them right ; and whether they are right or wrong is 
a point to be determined by Christ’s having or not having any 
solid right to receive human adoration, and any real capacity of 
hearing and answering the cries of His worshippers. If this 
right and this capacity are once established; the duty of ador- 
ing Jesus Christ is placed on a basis which does not admit of 


h “Good Words,’ p. 421. 
ee Ἀν 


530 Lote δὶ The Worship of Fesus Christ 


our restricting it to times of sorrow. If they are not established, 
human sorrow cannot really affect the unseen realities, and 
St. Stephen and St. Paul did but beat the air. 

If the Psalter teaches us any one great lesson with respect 
to sorrow, it is that we should be driven by it to renounce all 
merely human aids and hopes, and to cling more trustfully, 
exclusively, perseveringly to God as the true help and shield 
and strength of souls. And the Christian Bishop of the fifth 
century was not, we may be sure, unmindful of the teaching of 
David, or rather he was not notoriously false to it. The whole 
Church of his day, as the Church before him, adored Jesus 
Christ as Very God, and the Litanies of Vienne only elaborated 
into a new form, a devotion which was based not on the panic 
of certain rural Christians, but on the broad and assured faith 
of Christendom. 

3. But the Dean’s expressions respecting the relation of the. 
adoration of our Lord to the cultus of the saints in pre- 
Reformation times, present the most serious difficulties of this 
perplexing passage. In times of sorrow, he says, ‘Christ and 
the saints seemed to come out like stars, which in the daylight 
cannot. be seen, but in the darkness of the night were visible.’ 
The saints ‘have again receded into the darkness.’ ‘We by 
increased reflection have been brought to feel that of them and 
of their state we know not enough to justify this invocation of 
their help. But Christ, the Lord and King of the Saints, still 
remains’.... ‘We justly acquiesce in the practice of our re- 
formed Church, which has excluded these lesser mediators. 
But this one remarkable exception of the Litany in favour of 
addressing our prayers to the one great Divine Mediator may 
be surely allowed, if we remember that it is an exception, and 
understand the grounds on which it is made.’ 

This language seems to imply that the prayers to our Lord 
in the Litany are, in principle, identical with the prayers which 
in medizval times have been, and in Roman Catholic countries 
still are, addressed to the saints. There is indeed some confu- 
sion in speaking of the retention of prayer to the one great 
Divine Mediator as constituting a ‘remarkable exception’ to the 
proscription of prayers to the saints. For if the Great Mediator 
is ‘ Divine,’ in the natural sense of being personally God, and 
not only in the sense in which good men are said to be ‘ divine,’ 
as possessing in a high, the highest known degree, some moral 
qualities of God ; then the word ‘ exception’ is inapplicable to 
the case before us. If, on the contrary, Christ is not truly God ; 


an the Services of the Church of England. 531 


then, no doubt, the retention of worship addressed to Him is a 
‘remarkable exception’ to the expulsion of all other ‘ worship’ of 
the kind from the Prayer-book of the English Church. But it 
will hardly be contended that the English Reformers retained 
the old prayers to Christ our Lord, and added new ones of 
their own, on such a ground as this. Had they done so they 
would have been false to a principle to which they professed a 
devoted loyalty, and by means of which, so to speak, they made 
their way ;—the principle of restricting all prayer to God. 
They notoriously believed the adoration of Christ to be identical 
with, inseparable from, the adoration of God; to be guarded, 
justified, enforced by the first two commandments of the deca- 
logue, just as truly as is the adoration of the Father, and of 
the Holy Ghost, ‘Who with the Father and the Son together, 
is worshipped and glorified” And, whatever may be said of 
the language used in popular Roman Catholic devotions to 
the saints, it is certain that no Roman Catholic divine would 
for ene instant coordinate in word or thought the adoration 
paid to Jesus, with the ‘relative honour’ paid to His glorified 
servants. In short, neither Roman Catholic nor Reformer re- 
garded the adoration of Christ retained in our Prayer-book, as 
an ‘exception’ to the general proscription at the Reformation 
of the cultus of the saints. Had the Reformers done so, they 
would have had to reconstruct, not the Litany, but the Nicene 
Creed; they must also have re-written the second Article in 
a Socinian sense, and altered a clause of the twenty-second. 
Had the Roman Catholics done so, they would certainly have 
availed themselves of a vantage ground which would have en- 
abled them to deal with the Reformation as with a manifest revolt 
against the most fundamental truths of the Christian revela- 
tion. Whether the Roman invocations of the saints did or did 
not in any way wrong the Divine Prerogatives, was a point 
upon which the Reformers and their opponents differed seriously ; 
but they were perfectly agreed in justifying such language as 
that of our Litany by referring it to a truth which they held 
at least with equal earnestness ;—the truth that Jesus Christ 
is Ged. | 

If, in Grigen’s phrase, ‘caro Domini honorem Deitatis assu- 
mit ;’ if, as a consequence of the Hypostatic Union, our Lord’s 
Manhood rightly and necessarily shares in the adoration offered 
to Deity, this is because His Divine Person is ultimately and in 


i Nicene Creed, 
Mm 2 


532 Nolte αἰ. Cardinal de Turrecremata’s work 


reality, the object adored. ‘O God the Son, Redeemer of the 
world, have mercy upon us miserable sinners,’ ‘O Lamb of 
God that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon 
us. In either case it is Christ’s Eternal Person which claims 
our adoration ; that Person, with Which His Manhood is now 
for ever joined, as an attribute of It. And Christ’s Person is 
adored, for precisely the same reason as that which leads us to 
adore the Father ; nor could such adoration be offered to any 
created personality whatever, without repudiating altogether 
the first, the most sacred, prerogative of Deity. 


NOTE G, on Lecture VII. 


Cardinal de Turrecremata’s work on the Conception of the 
Blessed Virgin. 


The only copy of this work which I have seen is in the 
Mazarine Library at Paris, where it is numbered 12144. Its 
full title is, ‘Zractatus de Veritate Conceptionis Beatissime 
Virgiis, pro facienda relatione coram patribus Concilit Ba- 
sileensis, Anno Dnt. M.CCCO.XXX.VIL. Mense Julio. De 
mandato Sedis Apostolice Legatorum, eidem sacro Concilto 
presidentium compilatus. Per Reverendum Patrem, Fratrem 
Joannem de Turecremata, sacre Theologie professorem ordinis 
Predicatorum, tune sacri apostolict Palatii Magistrum, Posted 
Illustrissimum et Reverendissimum S. R. Ecclesie Cardinalem 
Lpiscopum Portuensem, nunc primo impressus. Lome apud 
Antonium Bladum Asulanum, M.D.XLVITL, | 

The book opens with a Preface by ‘ Frater Albertus Duimius 
de Catharo, ordinis predicatorum, Sacre Theologie professor : 
et in Sapientia urbis Rome, divine speculationis interpres, 
addressed ‘sincere veritatis amatoribus. After reviewing, 
chiefly in the language of Scripture itself, the grounds, nature, 
and obligations of the Christian faith, he proceeds :—‘ Est autem 
pre ceteris a sacris literis admodum aliena et Christi evangelio 
dissona humana quedam inventio, nostro infelici evo ita errata, 
ut posthabitis sacre scripture clarissimis testimoniis, spretis 
etiam ecclesie sanctorumque patrum veterumque ecclesiz doc- 
torum salutaribus monitis et doctrinis, cujusdam vane devo- 
tionis pretextu, sanctissimam Dei gentricem virginem, ΘΟ] 
reginam, angelorum atque hominum dominam, propriis quibus- 
dam adinventis laudibus celebrare cupiens, eam non fuisse Adz 
peccato obnoxiam, ac perinde Christi sanguinis pretio non 


Ἰ 


on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 533 


indiguisse, ineptils dogmatizare presumpserit, ut hine liceret 
aliquibus (qui sacris abuti consuevere) liberits vorare domos 
viduarum, seducereque corda simplicium longa oratione oranti- 
bus, existimantibusque questum esse pietatem. Quorum audacia 
divus Bernardus abbas, beatse virgini super omnes devotissimus, 
acritis reprehendit dicens: Miramur satis quod visum fuerit 
hoe tempore quibusdam voluisse mutare colorem ecclesiz op- 
timum, novam inducendo celebritatem, quam ritus ecclesiz 
nescit, non probat ratio, non commendat antiqua traditio. 
Numquid patribus doctiores aut devotiores sumus? Periculosé 
presumimus quicquid ipsorum prudentia preterivit. Virgo 
regia falso non eget honore veris honorum titulis cumulata, et 
infulis dignitatum. Non enim indiget Deus nostro mendacio. 
Hane autem fore sanctorum patrum et ecclesize luminarium 
doctrinam, quam Augustinus innumeraque antiquorum multi- 
tudo predicavit, quamque posteriores sancti doctrina et moribus 
probatissimi amplexati sunt, quam Thomas Aquinas sustinet, 
Divusque Bonaventura Minoritani ordinis, 8. R. E. Episcopus 
Cardinalis, fortissimé tueatur, luce clarits patere poterit, opus 
hoe Christiana mente legentibus. Horum autem sequacium 
tetigit Deus corda, ut veluti fortissimi milites Christi, sacram 
Scripturam in sui simplicitate et candore tuerentur et con- 
servarent. Inter alios autem, qui ex sacro Preedicatorum ordine 
(patrum imitati vestigia), liuic se militie devoverunt, Reverend- 
issimus olim sacri Apostolici Palatii Magister, ac postea (sic 
exigentibus virtutum meritis) 8. R.E. Cardinalis Episcopus 
Portuensis, D. Joanes de Turecremata Hispanus, jussu et man- 
dato sedis apostolic, presenti relatione scripta disseruit. Opus 
quidem ita sincerum et christian pietati conveniens, ut nus- 
quam, vel humane inventionis tenebre, vel proprize opinionis 
affectus appareant, sed undique evangelice veritatis candor 
splendere videatur. Opus inquam, summé necessarium sed 
hactenus rarissimum, et id quidem scriptorum inscitid in- 
numeris mendis respersum foedatumque, neglectu penitus habe- 
batur. Quietior namque erat omnium nostrum mens et animus, 
et hujusmodi questionibus oblitis, necessariora fidei dogmata 
tueri animo insederat, et temporum opportunitas exigebat. Sed 
immoderatior quorundam audacia, dum apud doctos et vere 
Theologos. minoris se existimationis advertunt, vulgarem de- 
biliumque mentium auram jamdiu sepultis novitatibus af- 
fectantes, in Tridentina synodo, de hujusmodi humani concepttis 
immunitate verbum facere verita non est. Quo factum est ut 
Reverendus pater frater Bartholomeus Spina Pisanus ordinis 
predicatorum, sacre Theologize professor, et sacri apostolici 


534 Lote G. Cardinal de Turrecremata’s work 


Palatii magister, zelo fidei accensus, opus hoe erroribus ex- 
purgari, typisque excussum, in publicum prodire, magno labore 
curaret. Accessit, (Deo favente) sanctissimi D.N.D. Pauli 
Pape Tertii consensus et favor.’ » 

For these reasons, and under these auspices, the work was 
printed at Rome in 1547. Towards the conclusion of his pre- 
face, the editor contrasts the theological aim and spirit of Tur- 
recremata with that of his opponents in such terms as these :— 

‘Non enim alio tendit ista disparitas, quam ut hine sacre 
scripture germana veritas, et ecclesize sanctorumque patrum et 
doctorum adprobata doctrina, laudatissima pietas, et vera re- 
ligio, illinec autem queedam vulgarium affectata devotio, sacris 
literis et doctoribus non admodum consona, quinimo, (ut qui- 
busdam visum est,) repugnans, et ab antiqua ecclesiz con- 
suetudine aliena, defendatur. Hine Christi~ universalis re- 
demptio, et super alios omnes Sacre Humanitatis Ejus excellentize 
prerogative, illinc equalitas virginis sacratissime et pie Dei 
genetricis, ad Filium Dei Hominem Deum, et ἃ reatu inimicitiz 
Dei, et naturali captivitate peccati immunitas, pro pietate de- 
fenduntur. Illis, quod vulgaribus, quodque muliercularum auri- 
bus gratum judicaverint pietatem adstruentibus ; nobis e contra 
nil pium, nil devotum, nilque Christiana celebritate dignum 
existimantibus, quod non ex sacris. literis auctoritatem habere 
comprobatur.’ 

The work itself is divided into thirteen parts. The first 
deals with the principles which are to govern the discus- 
sion. In the second, are considered those passages of the Old 
and New Testament, which, as interpreted by the Gloss and by 
the explanations of the saints, assert that Christ alone was free 
in His Conception from the taint of original sin. In the third 
part, Holy Scripture and the Fathers are quoted to shew that 
all human beings without exception who descend from Adam by 
way of natural propagation, are conceived in original sin. The 
fourth part is devoted to a consideration of the attempts of 
opponents to set aside the inferences drawn from Rom. iii. 22, 
vy. 12; Gal. ili. 22; St. Matt. ix. 13; St. Luke xix. 10; 1 Tim. 
i. 15, li. 5; 2 Cor. v.14. In the fifth part, Scripture, saints, 
and doctors, are cited to prove that ‘the Blessed Virgin Mary 
did in fact contract original sin.’ St. Luke i. 47 is interpreted 
as implying this. The subject is pursued in the sixth part; 
passages from St. Leo the Great, St.John of Damascus, St. 
Gregory, St. Anselm, Hugh of St. Victor, and especially St. Ber- 
nard’s Letter to the Canons of. Lyons, and the deliberate deci- 
sion in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose doctrine had 


on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 535 


been endorsed by the University of Paris, are passed in review. 
Lest opposition to the doctrine should be supposed to be only 
a Dominican peculiarity, an appeal is made to Minorite, Augus- 
tinian, Carmelite, Carthusian, and Cistercian theologians. In 
the seventh part, the weight of ancient authority is pressed 
_ against the opinion of the ‘modern doctors ;’ the conduct of the 
Dominican theologians is justified in detail ; and the truth of 
their doctrine is argued, from an examination of the prerogative 
glories of our Lord, especially in His Conception, and from the 
real limits of the ‘privileges’ commonly ascribed to the Blessed 
Virgin. The eighth part is an argument from the universality 
of our Lord’s redemption to man’s universal need of it ; ‘ omnis 
redemptus per Christum fuit aliquando peccati servitute cap- 
tivus :’ while, in the ninth, our Lord’s titles of Mediator, 
- Reconciler, Healer, Justifier, Sanctifier, Cleanser, Shepherd, and 
Priest of His people are successively expanded in their relation 
to the doctrine of the absolute universality of human sin. In 
the tenth, the author attacks the arguments and authorities 
which were cited to prove the ἃ priori position, that God ought 
to have preserved the Blessed Virgin from original sin ; here 
too he criticises the Scotist theory of the reason for the Incar- 
nation. In the eleventh he assails in detail the arguments 
which were adduced to prove that the Blessed Virgin was in 
point of fact preserved from the taint of original sin; in the 
twelfth, those which were brought forward to shew that she was 
thus preserved by a prevenient grace of sanctification. The 
last part of the work recapitulates the disputed propositions ; 
discusses the opinion that ‘pejus sit stare per unum instans in 
originali peccato quam eternaliter esse damnatum ;’ meets the 
allegation of miracles wrought to prove the Immaculate Concep- 
tion by alleging miracles wrought to disprove it; examines 
the bearing of the established festival of the Conception on the 
faith of the Church ; and finally insists that between those who 
asserted and those who denied the Immaculate Conception of 
the Blessed Virgin there were not less than twenty points of 
difference. 

At the end of the book, Turrecremata subjoins a personal 
explanation. He states that on presenting himself at Basle, 
with a view ‘ad faciendam relationem mihi injunctam,’ he was 
told by the Cardinal Legate who presided, that the Fathers were 
so occupied with the questions raised by the arrival of the 
Greeks, that he could not be heard. He remained at Basle for 
some months, but to no purpose. Upon the outbreak of the 
disagreement between the Legates of Eugenius and ‘patres 


536 Note G. Cardinal de Turrecremata’s work 


aliquos Basileze residentes,’ Turrecremata returned to Rome 
with his book. He adds with reference to the later proceedings 
of the Council in the matter of the Immaculate Conception : 
‘Ex his apertissimé intelliget quisque doctus quod vacua et 
invalida sit determinatio quam in materia prefata conceptionis 
beatissimee virginis factam quidam aiunt post recessum meum . 
Basilea.. Invalida quidem est veritate, cum facta sit manifesté 
contra apertissima sanctorum patrum ecclesiz testimonia, ac 
contra doctrinam expressam principalium doctorum tam divini — 
juris quam humani, sicut ex prefato opere luce clariis videri 
potest.’ A further reason for this invalidity he finds in the 
previous departure of the papal legates and the proclamation 
of the transference of the Council to Bologna. 

Such a work as Turrecremata’s has only to be described, and 
it speaks for itself. Here is an elaborate treatise of between - 
700 and 800 closely-printed pages; abounding in appeals to 
authority, the most ancient and the most modern ; full of hard, 
scholastic argument; scarcely less full, at times, of passionate 
rhetoric. It shrinks from no encounter with the maintainers of 
the doctrine which it impugns ; it traverses, with fearless con- 
fidence, and according to the learning and methods of its day, 
with exhaustive completeness, the whole field of the controversy. 
Whether it has been really answered or not by the arguments 
of Ballerini, of Perrone, of Passaglia, is not here the question. 
Enough to say that in the year of our Lord 1437, it represented 
the mind of the reigning Pope, the mind too of the Theologian 
who in his ‘ Apology for Eugenius IV.’ most stoutly maintained 
the extreme papal claims against the superiority of a General 
Council, as asserted at Basle. Turrecremata had no tinge of 
what afterwards became ‘ Gallicanism ;’ he was a hearty Ultra- 
montane, and in the confidence of the Pontiff. He, if any one, 
could speak on behalf of the Western Church, of its learning, of 
its piety, of its central authority, in the middle of the fifteenth 
century. And his work against the Immaculate Conception is 
perhaps the most remarkable of the many documents, which 
make any real parallel between the claims of the truth asserted at 
Niczea, and those of the definition of Dec. 8, 1854, impossible. 

A high Roman Catholic authority has said that ‘they who 
ask why the Immaculate Conception has been defined in the 
nineteenth century, would have asked why the “ homoousion” 
was defined in the fourth.’ If they had done so, they would 
have received in the fourth century an answer for which in the 


ο The Reunion of Christendom, a Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, by Henry 
Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. London, Longmans, 1866, p. 51. 


on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 537 


nineteenth they must wait in vain. In the fourth century they 
would have been told that the substantial truth defined at Nica 
had always been believed as a fundamental truth of the Gospel ; 
that those who had denied it had been accounted heretics, from 
the days of the Apostles downwards ; that Arius was accounted 
a heretic, on first broaching his novel doctrine; that the cir- 
cumstances of the time demanded for the old unchanging truth 
the protection of a new definition ; but that the definition added, 
could add, nothing to the faith which had been held in its 
fulness from the first—the faith that Jesus Christ is God. In 
the nineteenth century they are told that the definition of the 
Immaculate Conception had the effect of raising to a certainty 
of faith that which was, before Dec. 8, 1854, only a matter of 
pious opinion ; that those who, before that date, had denied 
this opinion were so far from being accounted heretics, that they 
were expressly protected from censure by the highest authority ; 
that although the newly-defined truth had been taught to the 
Church by the Apostles themselves and had all along been latent 
in her mind, yet that her most representative divines and doctors 
had again and again, with perfect impunity, nay with the highest 
sanctions, expressly repudiated and condemned it. 

It will be said that the same authority speaks at Rome which 
spoke at Nicea. Upon that most important question we do 
not here and now enter. But with a book like Turrecremata’s 
before us, we cannot decline the conclusion that in A.D. 325 and 
1854 two entirely different things were done; unless it can 
be shewn that some hitherto unknown writer of the highest 
consideration and of unsuspected orthodoxy in the ante-Nicene 
period maintained against others who defended the Homoousion, 
and by an appeal to a vast accumulation of authorities, the precise 
doctrine for which Arius was condemned. That would be a 
real counterpart to the position of Cardinal Turrecremata in 
relation to the recent definition of the Immaculate Conception : 
as it is, the doctrinal and historical ‘parallel’ upon which 
some Roman Catholics and many opponents of the Christian 
Revelation now lay so much stress, is not sufficiently accurate 
to justify either of the opposite conclusions which it is put 
forward in order to recommend. : 


INDEX. 


The numerals refer to the Lectures, the figures to the pages. 


A. 


Abraham, promise to, ii. 45 ; Divine 
manifestations to, 52; ‘Seed’ of, 
78; his seeing the day of Christ, 
iv. 187. 

Adam, the first and the Second, vi. 


304. 

Adoration, distinguished from ‘ad- 
miration,’ vii. 361; of Christ in 
the New Testament, v. 236, 243; 
vii. 364 sq.; not a ‘secondary wor- 
ship,’ 376; embraced His Man- 
hood, 379; referred to by early 
Fathers, ib. sq.; embodied in 
hymns, 385 sq.; offered in the 
Eucharistic office, 389; noticed 
by Pagans, 391 sq.; defended by 
Christian writers, 394 sq.; carica- 
tured in ‘Graffito blasfemo,’ 396; 
offered by Martyrs, 398 sq.; even 
by Arians, 403; and by early So- 
cinians, 404; inthe English Church 
Service, i. 40; viii. 474; Note D. 

Adrian, on worship of Christ, vii. 
391, 392. 

fons, ν. 221; vi. 308, 309, 316; vii. 


430. 
Agnoetz, heresy of, viii. 462. 
‘Alexamenos adores his God,’ vii. 


397- 

Alexandria, real function of its 
Theosophy, ii. 70; Eclectic school 
of, vii. 356; Christian school of, 


423. 
Alford, Dean, v. 237, 238; vi. 288, 
290, 314, 317, 325, notes. 


Alogi, rejected St. John’s Gospel, 


v. 208, 217. 


Ambrose, St., as a commentator, ii. 
45, Vil. 417. 


Ananias, prayer of, to Christ, vii. 370. 


Andrewes, Bishop, on Christ’s Sacri- 
fice. viii. 477. 

‘Angel of the Lord,’ the, ii. 53 sq. 

Angels, the holy, vi. 297, 310, 321, 
343, 377: 

Ante-Nicene Fathers, their testi- 
mony to Divinity of Christ, vii. 
411; their language not ‘mere 
rhetoric,’ 417; doubtful state- 
ments alleged from, 418 sq.; ten- 
tative position of, 420; their real 
mind shown when the doctrine 
was questioned, 424. 

Antichrist, the token of, i. 23; v. 
241. 

Anti-dogmatic moralists, i. 37. 

Antinomianism, vi. 285, 286. 

Antioch, Council of, its rejection of 
the ‘ Homoousion,’ vii. 431; School 
of, 437. 

Apocalypse, the, at one with St. 
John’s Gospel in its Christology, 
v. 243; the Lamb adored in, ib.; 
vii. 375; probable date of, vi. 277. 


Apocrypha, the, of second century,v.. 


217, 218. 
Apollinarianism, i. 25; v. 261; viii. 


455- 

Apollinaris of Hierapolis, v. 213. 

‘A postasy, the God-denying,’ vii. 424. 

Apostles, theories as to disagree- 
ment of, vi. 278; with differences 
of method, preach one Divine 
Christ, 280, 350, 351; all sent by 
Christ, vii. 368. 


)) ir 
om 


INDEX. 


539 


Apotheosis, among Romans, no pa- 
rallel to worship of Christ, i. 26; 
v. 267; vii. 363. 

Arianism, its conception of Christ, 
i. 16, 26, 323 vi. 310; vill. 455; 
its worship of Him, idolatrous in 
principle, vii. 403; its inference 
from received belief as to Theo- 
phanies, ii. 56; its view of ‘ Wis- 
dom’ as created, 60; its connec- 
tion with early Judaizing move- 
ment, vi. 349; Vil. 437; and with 
Greek dialectical method, 356; 
various antichristian forces com- 
bined in it, 437; its popularity, 


430. 

Arnobius, on Christ’s Divinity, vii. 
415. 

Artemon, his allegation as to doc- 
trine of Christ’s Divinity, vii. 425. 

Articles of Religion, the, on the In- 
carnation, v. 258; on the Sacra- 
ments, Vill. 479, 480. 

Athanasian. Creed, i. 24; v. 260; 
Vii. 438. 

Athanasius, St., his analysis of Ari- 
anism, 1. 18; his use of αὐτόθεος, 
iv. 200; on adoration of Christ, 
vii. 403; on limitation of human 
knowledge in Him, viii. 460; on 
Council of Antioch, vii. 431; why 
he contended for Homoousion, 
436; on prayers to Christ for the 
emperor, Note F. 

Athenagoras, on the Logos, v. 228; 
vil. 412 ; on the ‘Generation,’ 418. 

Atonement, doctrine of, dependent 
on Christ’s Divinity, vii. 472 sq. 

Augustine, St., on doctrinal terms, 
i. 33; on Theophanies, ii. 56; on 
“Ev ἐσμεν, iv. 184; on St. John’s 
Gospel, v. 227; on St. Paul’s de- 
scription of a moral dualism, 262 ; 
on Sacraments, viil. 484. 


Balaam, prophecy of, ii. 76. 


Baptism, i. 30; v. 2513 vi. 345, 346; 


Vill. 481. 

Basil, St., vii. 419. 

Basilides, cognizant of St. John’s 
Gospel, v. 216. 

Baur, admissions of, i. 26; iv. 173; 
v. 226, 235; ignores dogmatic 
character of Christ’s teaching, i. 3; 


on ‘Son of Man,’ i. 7; on Hebrew 
monotheism, ii. 93; on Fourth 
Gospel, v. 210, 225, note; on St. 
James and St. Paul, vi. 282; on 
number of Pauline epistles, 306; 
on ἁρπαγμόν, 316, note. 

Beryllus, denies Christ’s human 
Soul, i. 25. 

Blandrata, vil. 405. 

Boethius, on ‘ Person,’ i. 32. 

Boileau, on phenomenon of the 
Church, iii. 118. 

Bretschneider, his ‘ Probabilia,’ v. 


209. 

ieee Bishop Harold, on human 
limitations in Christ, viii. 468, 
note. 

Bruno Bauer, v. 227. 

Buddhism, its spread not parallel to 
that of Christianity, ili. 133,134; 
does not aim at universality, 120; 
does not deify Buddha, vii. 378. 

Bull, Bishop, on Subordination, iv. 
200, note; on St. Paul and St. 
James, vi. 283: on Origen, Vii. 
394; against Petavius, 419; on 
Christ’s human knowledge, viii. 
467. ‘ 

Bushell, on boldness of Christ’s 
‘plan,’ 11. 116, note. 

Butler, Bishop, on the moral obliga- 
tions created by revealed truth, 
i, 40. 


C. 


Cabbalism, vi. 281. 

Cesarea Philippi, 1. 1. 

Cakya-Mouni, ili. 134; vil. 378. 

Calixtus, ii. 51. 

Calvinism, Sacramental teaching of, 
viii. 480; downward progress of, 


404. 

Canon, of New Testament, its form- 
ation, v. 213. 

Canticles, the Evangelical, their sig- 
nificance, v. 248. 

Catechism, Church, Sacramental 
teaching of the, viii. 480, 481. 
Cave, on Council of Antioch, vii. 

431, note. ' 

Celsus, as an opponent of Christi- 
anity, v. 217; vii. 292; on idea 
of a universal religion, 111. 117; 
on Christians’ worship of Christ, 


540 


INDEX. 


ili. 143; vii. 393, 394; refers to 
St. John’s Gospel, v. 217., 

Cerinthus, heresy of, v. 221, 226, 239. 

Chalcedon, Council of, its dogmatic 
language, i. 25; v. 258, note. 

Channing, why anti-dogmatic, i. 38; 
his position criticised by Renan, 
iv. 158; his use of the phrase— 
‘Christ’s Divinity,’ vii. 434; ex- 
plains away worship paid to Him, 
vii. 366; on obsecrations in Li- 
tany, i. 40; on authoritativeness 
of Christ’s teaching, iii. 115; on 
His ‘plan,’ 112, note; on His 
character, iv. 194, 203 sq. 

Charity, in St. John, v. 242; a pro- 
duct of the Incarnation, viii. 494 
sq. 

Curist, His person an object of 
perpetual interest, i. 11 sq.; how 
viewed by modern philosophers, 
13; Lives of, 15, and Note A; 
His Manhood real, i. 18 sq.; vi. 
303 sq.; His condescension, vi. 
310, 311; His Nativity, according 
to Synoptists, v. 247, 248; His 
early life, iii. 107 sq.; vi. 310; 
His Human Will, v. 261 sq.; His 
Human Knowledge, i. 22; viii. 
456 sq.; Moral perfection of His 
Character, i. 23; iv. 165, 192 sq.; 
His sense of Sinlessness, 163 sq.; 
vastness of His Self-assertion, 167 
sq.; and of His claims, 173 sq.; 
v. 251 sq.; the Messiah of Pro- 
phecy, ii. 78 sq.; ili. 115; His 
Teaching, iv. 162 sq.; v. 249; its 
Infallibility, viii. 453 sq.; His 
Priesthood and Atonement, viii. 
476 sq.; His position as Founder 
of a Kingdom, iii. 100; His‘ Plan,’ 
105 sq.; and its realization, 118 
sq.; His Example, i.25; viii. 486 
sq.; His Sympathy, i. 25; His 
Miracles, iv. 153 8q.; v. 235; His 
Transfiguration, v. 253; vi. 300; 
His Agony, i. 21; v. 263, 273; 
vill. 463; His Death, i. 22; iv. 
197; Vi. 297; viii. 472 sq.; His 
Resurrection, iii. 145; iv. 154 sq.; 


V. 253; vill. 473; His Ascension, | 


v. 253; His Intercession, i. 25; 
viii. 485; His office as Second 
Adam, vi. 304; as Mediator, vi. 


303, 306; vill. 453; Incorporation 
into Him, vi. 289, 345; bearing of 
His Manhood on our inner life, 
i. 25; viii. 481; Christianity con- 
centrated in Him, iii.127; vi. 331; 
His living power, i. 35; His Pre- | 


sence in and with Christians, vi. 
337, 342, 347; Vili. 482, 487, 490; 
His intense hold on souls, 1]. 
125, 126; His moral creative- 
ness, ili. 129; vill. 488 sq.; His 
future return as Judge, iv. 173; ᾿ 
worship paid to Him, in His 
earthly life and after it, see 
* Adoration ;? His Godhead, the 
seat of His Single Personality, 
i, 23, note; v. 222, 257 sq.; 
implies Co-equality and Con- 
substantiality, iv. 181; co-exist- 
ent with His perfect Manhood, 
v. 262 sq.; vill. 450; intimated 
and affirmed in Old Testa- 
ment, ii. 48 sq.; gradually un- 
folded, i. 39 ; v. 273; implied in 
much of His language, iv. 173 54.; 
explicitly revealed by Him, 177 
sq.; titles expressing it, vi. 312 
sq.; in fact necessary to His 
moral excellence, iv. 196 sq., 205 ; 
vi. 311; attested by Synoptists as 
by St. John,v. 2448q.; proclaimed 
by Apostles, Lect. v. and vi.; 
vii. 428 ; not imagined by ‘enthu- 
siasm,’ v. 267 ; confessed by the 
early Church, vii. 406 sq.; pro- 
tects truths of natural religion, 
Vili. 444 8q.; supports other. 
truths of faith, iii. 146; vi. 298 ; 
Vili. 453 54. 

Christianity, social results of, iii. 
130; viii. 488 sq.; causes of its 
success, ili. 132 sq. 

Christian life, the, dependent on 
Christ, iii. 127. ; 

Chronology of St. John and the 
Synoptists, v. 224, note. 

Chrysostom, St., as a commentator, 
vii. 417; on Arianism, vi. 317, 
note. ; 

Church, the, not a ‘republic,’ iii. 
100; originality of its conception, 
110; continuous progress of, 118 ; 
present prospects of, 1203 viii. 
498; universality of, vi. 333 ; 


INDEX. 


" 5B4I 


losses and divisions of, iii. 121; 
recuperative powers of, 131 ; sus- 
tained by faith in a Divine Christ, 
145; vill. 498; supernatural life 
of, vi. 329, 333 56. 

Cicero, scepticism of, iii. 129. 

Clarke, Dr., Arianism of, i. 18. 

Clement of Alexandria, St., on 
St. John’s Gospel, v. 212; on 
worship of Christ, vii 382, 387 ; 
on His Divinity, 413 ; inaccurate 
language of, 418, 423. 

Clement of Rome, St., on Nero’s 
persecution, vi. 277. 

Colenso, Dr., rejects Deuteronomy, 
viii. 469, 470; denies Christ’s 
Infallibility, ib. and 454, 455; 
his objections to worship of Christ, 
Note F. 

Coleridge on Socinian worship of 
Christ, vil. 405 ; criticises Atha- 
nasian Creed, 438. 

Colossians, Epistle to, character of, 
vi. 281, note ; 332. 

Common Prayer, Book of, i. 40; 
viii. 474, 481; Note Ὁ. 

‘Communicatio idiomatum,’ v. 258 ; 
vi. 306, note. | 

Comte, his philosophy and ritual, 
111. 124, 

Conception, the Immaculate, defini- 
‘tion of, not parallel to that of 
Homoousion, vii. 427 sq.; im- 
pugned and on what grounds by 
Cardinal Turrecremata, Note G. 

Confucianism, spread of, not paral- 
lel to that of Christianity, iii. 134. 

Constitutions,the A postolical,vii.388. 

Coquerel on St. James, vi. 285, note, 

Corinthians, Epistles to, character 
of, vi. 329 54. 

Council, Fifth General, vii. 371, note; 
Sixth General, v. 263, note. 

Councils, i. 25, 37; vii. 420. 

Creation, how Incarnation is re- 
lated to it, v. 265; ascribed to 
Christ, vi. 319. 

Creator, prerogatives of the, i, 29; 
iv. 200; Vv. 233; vil. 360. 

Creeds, scope of modern objections 
to, 1. 34 sq. ; lasting necessity of, 
Vii. 436 sq. 

Crucifixion, the, a stumbling-block, 
iii. 137, 141. 


Cyprian, St., on Christ’s Divinity, 
vil. 415. 

Cyril of Alexandria, St., on limita- 
tion of human knowledge in 
Christ, viii. 461 ; on His Sacrifice, 
477; on Sacraments, 481, 482, 
notes. 

Cyril of Jerusalem, St., on reality 
of Christ’s Manhood, i. 26; on 
efficacy of His Death, viii. 477. 


D. 

Daniel, Book of, on ‘Son of Man,’ 
i. 6; iv. 173, 191; on Christ’s 
dominion, ii. 88 ; iii. 111. 

Davidic period of Prophecy, ii. 79 


sq. 
Decretals, the False, viii. 470. 
‘ Definition,’ theological, objected to, 


i. 34. 

Deism, unable to guard the idea of 
God, viii. 444 sq. 

Deutero-canonical books, ii. 61 sq. 

Deuteronomy, recognized by Christ, 
Vili. 447. 

‘Development,’ doctrinal, sense of 
the term, vil. 426 sq. 

Diognetus, letter to, vii. 411. 

Dionysius of Alexandria, St., ortho- 
dox although misunderstood, vii. 
416 sq., 425, 430; on the Pres- 
byter John, Note H. | 

Dionysius of Rome, St., vii. 425. 

Divinity of our Lord, see ‘ Christ.’ 

Docetism, i. 19, 24, 25; ii. 69; v. 
221, 247. 

Doctrinal position of the Lectures, 
i. 34. 

Doctrine and morals, in Apostolic 
writings, vi. 281, 288. 

Dogma, modern dislike of, i. 37; v. 
267; inseparable from religion, i. 
3,43; the Christ of, identical with 
the Christ of history, iv. 152. See 
* Creeds.’ 

Déllinger, on ‘ apotheoses’ at Rome, 
i. 27, note; on Stoicism, iii. 144, 
note ; on ἁρπαγμόν, vi. 316, note; 
on John Presbyter, Note E. 

Dorner, on Schleiermacher, i. 16 ; on 
Jewish Theology, ii. 70; on ‘Son 
of Man,’ v. 250; on St. John and 
the Synoptists, 255; on Justin 
Martyr, vii. 422. 


542 


INDEX. 


Ebionitism, i. 15 ; v. 221, 247. 

‘Ecce Homo,’ i. 15 ; Note A; on 
Christ’s foundation of a Society, 
iii. 110; on His miracles, iv. 161; 
on His humility, 195; on His 
condescension, vi. 310. 

Ecclesiasticus, date of, ii. 64. 

‘El,’ ii. 87. 

Elizabeth, her greeting of Mary, v 

8 


248. 

Ellicott, Bishop, on passages in 
St. Paul, vi. 312, 315, notes ; on 
human limitations in Christ, viii. 
463, note. 

‘Elohim,’ ii. 48 ; Note B. 

Emanatists, vii. 430. 

‘Emmanuel,’ ii. 88; v. 247. 

Enoch, Book of, i. 7 ; vi. 302. 

Enthusiasm, Christ not deified by, 
v. 267. 

Ephesians, Epistle to, vi. 281, note, 


332. 

Ephesus, Council of, v. 258. 

Eucharist, the Holy, iv. 157; v. 253 ; 
Vi. 330; Vii. 389; viii. 481. 

Eulogius, against Agnoetz, viii. 

62. 

ist diienions, v. 261; viii. 462. 

Evangelists, fundamentally at one 
in their representations of Christ, 
V. 244 Sq. 

Ewald, his view of Christ, i. 15, 16; 
Note A ; on St. John’s Gospel, v. 
218, 268. 

Ezekiel, sense of ‘Son of Man’ in, 
i. 8. 

F. 


Faith, grace of, as described by 
St. Paul, vi. 340 sq. 

Faith, the, once delivered, vii. 
427 Sq. 

‘Fountain of Deity,’ a title of God 
the Father, iv. 181, 200 ; vii. 422. 

Félix, on originality, iii. 106. 

Feuerbach, his view of Christ, i. 13 ; 
his naturalistic theory of religion, 
v. 267, 

Fichte, his definition of religion, i. 
3; his view of Christ, 13. 

Firmilian, vii. 431. 

Freewill in man, v. 265, 


G. 

Galatians, Epistle to, vi. 327, 328, 
349. 

‘Generation, Eternal,’ of the Son, 
iv. 182; 3 Vil. 422, 423. 

Genesis, ii. 48. 

Gesenius, ii. 61. 

Gibbon, his ‘five causes,’ iii. 135; 
his sneer at ‘ the iota,’ Vil. 435. 
Gladstone, on ‘Ecce Homo,’ 

Note A. 

‘Gloria in excelsis,’ the, vii. 386. 

‘Glory,’ in St. John’s Gospel, v, 
230. 

Gnosticism, li. 69 ; v. 220, 221, 239; 
vi. 281, note, 308, 309. 

Gop, the true idea of, i. 30; viii. 
448; not secured by Deism, 444 
sq.; Pantheistic misuse of the 
Name, i. 29; Vill. 451, note. 

Goethe, on originality, iii. 106 ; his 
admiration of the heathen mind, 
ii. 76. 

Grace, vi. 233. 

Gregory of Nazianzen, St., on A- 
rianism, vii. 437, note; on ‘ig- 
norance,’ viii. 461. 

Gregory of Nyssa, St., on Arianism, 
Vii. 437, note, 438. 

Guizot, on originality of Christ’s 
‘plan,’ iii, 112. 


H. 
Hebrews, Epistle to, vi, 281, note, 


320. 

Hegel, his definition of religion, i. 3; 
his view of Christ, 13. 

Hengstenberg, ii. 86. 

Heracleon, v. 216. 

Herder, on St. John’s Gospel, v. 
208. 

Heresy, how viewed by St. John, 
v. 242; by St. Paul, vi. 279, 336. 

Hilary, Bt. i on Homoousion, Vii. 
431, 0 

Hi sclytus: St οἱ Philosophumena’ of, 
v. 216; on Christ’s Divinity, vii. 
4153 inaccurate language of, 418, 

Historical estheticism, its objec- 
tion to dogma, 1 i. 34; ‘historical 
spirit,’ the, iv. 151. 


| * Homoiousion,’ the, vii. 435. 


INDEX. 


543 


‘Homoousion,’ history of the term, 
i. 32; vii. 430; see Lect. VII. ; 
how criticised by moderns, 358 ; 
explains early Church’s worship 
of Christ, 359 sq.; summarizes 
her Christology, 405 sq.; a ‘ de- 
velopment’ only by explanation, 
426 sq.; why rejected by Council 
of Antioch, 431. 

Hooker, on ‘being in Christ,’ vi. 
347; on human limitations in 
Christ, viii. 466; on Hypostatic 
Union, 476. 

Hope, its necessity and uses, ii. 72 ; 
Israel sustained by, 75. 

‘Humanity,’ era of, iii. 130; idea 
of, protected by the Incarnation, 
Vill. 451, 494. 

Humanitarianism, i. 15, 25; vi. 292, 
323, 3375; Vil. 425 5 Vill. 473. 

Humanity of our Lord, see ‘ Christ.’ 

Humility, Christ’s Incarnation the 
great motive to, vili. 491 sq. 

Hymns, fragments of, in the Epi- 
stles, vi. 327, 328; value of, as 
expressing Christian doctrine, vii. 
385 sq. 

‘ Hypostasis,’ history of the term, 


" 33; 
*‘ Hypostatic Union,’ i. 17, 23, note, 
257 84. ; Vili. 464, 470. 


I 


Ignatius, St., alludes to St. John, 
v. 214; on worship of Christ, vii. 
379; on His Divinity, 411. 

‘Ignorance’ and ‘error,’ not iden- 
tical, viii. 468. 

‘Image of God, a title of Christ, 
vi. 317. 

Incarnation, the, illustrated by mys- 
teries in our present being, v. 

_ 260; how related to Creation, 
265; secures belief in a living 
God, viii. 447; protects dignity 
of man, 451. See ‘ Christ.’ 

‘Inferential Theology,’ viii. 440 sq.; 
Inspiration, ii. 45 sq. ; Vv. 219. 

Ireneus, St., i. 8; on the Four 
Gospels, v. 210; on Christ’s Di- 
vinity, vil. 413; on His human 

4 ἰκβοῖδρφος 459. 

Isaiah, prophecy of, its Messianic 


richness, and its unity, ii. 83 sq. ; 
his self-abasement, iv. 164. 

Israel, Messianic hopes of, ii. 74 sq.; 
a Theocracy, iii. 99. 


J 


Jackson, Dr., on Hypostatic Union, 
v. 258, 259, notes. 

Jacobi, his view of Christ, i. 13. 

James, St., Epistle of, vi. 278, 280, 
282 sq. 

Jehovah, name of, ii. 88. 

Jeremiah, prophecy of, ii. 84, 88, 


Jerome, St., on Christian society, 
ili. 125, note; on Ante-nicenes, 
Vii. 421. 

Jerusalem, council of, vi. 278, 287. 

Jesus, Name of, ii. 88 ; v. 247, notes. 

Jews, their history a witness to 
Christ, iii. 97; hostility of, to 
Christianity, 137, 138. 

Job, ‘Wisdom’ referred to in, ii, 


59: 

John Baptist, St., iii. rrr. 

John Damascene, St.,on Hypostatic 
Union, v. 258, 259, notes; on 
Two Energies, v. 264, note. 

John the Evangelist, St., see Lect. 
V.; life and character of, 240 sq., 
269, 273 84. ; compared with St. 
Paul, vi. 282, 350; Gospel of, its 
authenticity, v. 208 sq. ; its three 
purposes, 219 sq. ; internal diffi- 
culties urged against it, 224, 
note; its relation to the other 
Gospels, 244 sq.; Epistles of, 
238 sq.; vil. 374; Revelation of, 
see ‘ Apocalypse.’ 

John Presbyter, Note E. 

Jowett, Prof., on Philo, ii. 67, 68, 
notes. 

‘ Joyful Light,’ hymn, vii. 387. 

Judaizers, vi. 281, 332, 348, 349. 

Jude, St., Christology of, vi. 301, 
302. 

Justification, i. 41 ; vi. 342. 

Justin Martyr, St., on ‘ the Angel 
of the Lord,’ ii. 55 ; his testimony 
to St. John’s Gospel, v. 214; on 
worship of Christ, vii. 381; on 
Christ’s Divinity, 412 ; difficulties 
in his language; 418 sq. 

Juvenal, ili, 140° viii. 488. 


544 


INDEX. 


5. 

Kant, his definition of religion, i. 3; 
his view of Christ, i. 12. 

Keble, iii, 129, 130; on 
Man,’ i. 8, note. 

Keim, iii. 113, note; Note A. 

‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ foundation 
and laws of the, 111. 99 sq. Seé 
‘Church.’ 

Klee, on question of ‘ignorance,’ 
Viii. 458 sq., notes. 

Kuhn, ii. 63. 

- Kyrie Eleison,’ the, vii. 388. 


L. 


Lactantius, on worship of Christ, 

vil. 395 ; inaccurate sai a of, 
41 

Palicalinadans on Creeds, vii. 437. 

Law, Christianity a new, vi. 287. 

Lazarus, raising of, iv. 157, 262 ; v. 
274. 

Lecky, on originality of Christ’s 
teaching, iii. 110, note; on ‘reve- 
rence,’ vii. 360, note. 

Leibnitz, on human ‘ignorance’ in 
Christ, viii. 464. note. 

Leo, St., on Hypostatic Union, 
Vv. 257, note. 

Litany, the, i. 40; vili..474. 


‘Son of 


‘Little Labyrinth,’ the, vii. 426, 
note. 

Liturgies, Mozarabic and. Eastern, 
vii. 389, 390. 


Logos, the, in Philo, ii. 62 sq.; in 
St. John, v. 227 54: ς in St. James, 
vi. 288; in St. Peter, 298; ἐνδιά- 
Geros and mpogopixds, vii. 418. 

Lucian, scofis at worship of Christ, 
Vii. 392. 

Lucian of Antioch, vii. 419. 

Luke, St., his narrative of the 
Nativity, ν. 247. 

Luther, asserts the ‘ubiquity’ of 
Christ’s manhood, viii. 463. 

M. 

Manhood of our Lord, see ‘ Christ. F 

Manicheans, vii. 430. 

Mansel, Prof., on ‘Reason’ in Plato, 
ii. 64, note. 

Marcion, v. 211, 216. 


Martensen, v. 238, 247, notes; Vill. — 


481, note. 


Martyrs, the, iv. 144, 145; pray to 
Christ in their agony, vii. 398 sq., 
406 sq. 

Mary, the B.V., i. 19; iv. τόρ ; 
v. 247, 248, 257, 258; vil. 433. 

Materialism, viii. 451. 

Matthew, St., his narrative of the 
N ativity, V. 247. 

Melchisedee, vi. 321. 

Melito, St., on Christ’s Divinity, vii. 
412, 426. 

‘Memra,’ the, ii. 63, 70. - 
Messiah, hope of the, ii. 60, 77; its 
debasement, g1. See ‘Christ.’ 

‘ Metaphysics,’ inseparable from reli- 
gion, i. 41 ; viii. 444. 

Meyer, on σάρξ, i. 19, note ; on Philo, 
Vv. 229, note; on dignity and pre- 
existence of Christ, iv. 182, 183, 
188; ν. 228; vi. 319, notes. 

Mill, Dr., on narratives of Nativity, 
v. 247, note; on limitation of 
Christ’s human knowledge, viii. 
460, note; on Strauss, note A, p. 
502. 

‘ Ministration,’ 
vii. 421. 

Miracles, evidence from, iii. 145 ; of 
Christ, iv. 153 sq. 

Mohammedanism, based on a dogma, 
i. 4; its spread no parallel to that 
of Christianity, iii. 133. 

Monarchianism, vii. 421. 

Monophysitism, i. 25. 

Monotheism, of Israel, ii. 67, 76, 
95; of Christianity, v. 270; vi. 


897 §q- 


ascribed to Christ, 


, Monothelitism, i. 25; v. 261. 


Montanism, v. 217. 

Moses, ii. 47, 53. 

Muratorian Fragment, the, v. 212.. 

Mystery no bar to faith, v. 264. 

Mysticism, iv. 185, 198; in St. John, 
vi. 351. 


N. 


‘Name of God,’ sense of, ii. 50. 

Napoleon I. on Christ’s Divinity, 
111. 147, 148. 

Nathanael, Christ’s words to, viii. 
465 ; confession of, i, 113 iv. 177; 
Ve 273. 

Naturalism, ii. 76, 895 3; lii. 108; vi. 
308, 


4 


INDEX. 


545 


‘Natures’ of Christ, the Two, v. 
256 sq. 

Neander, on Christ as Pattern 
Man, i. 8, note; on preparations 
for Christianity, ii. 71; on the 

' Logos, v. 226; on SS. Paul and 
John, vi. 351; on Celsus, vii. 392, 
note. 

Neighbour, idea of, vi. 288, note. 

Neo-platonism, vii. 356. 

Nestorianism, iii. 121 ; v. 257; viii. 
463. 

New Testament, Christology of, 
summarized, vii. 428. 

Newman, Dr., on περιχώρησιϑ, i. 33, 
note ; on Bp. Bull, vii. 419, note ; 
on Homoousion, 430, note. 

Newman, F. W., his ‘Phases of 
Faith,’ i. 42 ; denies Christ’s moral 
perfection, i. 23; iv. 166, 198, 
notes; on His claim to be the 
Judge, 173; on His Self-assertion, 
196, note; on His death, 197, 
note. 

Nicza, Council of, ii. 94; vii. 429 
sq.; Creed of, i. 18; iv. 200, note; 
V. 256 ; vii. 359, 410, 432, 434 8q.; 
Vili. 473. 

Nicholas I., his use of False Decre- 
tals, viii. 471. | 

Noetus, i. 15 ; vii. 425. 

Nonconformists, iii. 124. 

Novatian, on progressive revelation, 
ii. 47; on prayer to Christ, vii. 
384. 


O. 

Ollivant, Bp., on Isaiah, ii. 83. 

Olshausen, i. 6; vi. 347, note. 

Omniscience, in Christ, viii. 456, 
466. 

‘Only-begotten,’ the, v. 233. 

‘Operations’ in Christ, two, v. 263, 
264, notes. 

Ophites, the, v. 217. 

Origen, as a commentator, vii. 417 ; 
on worship of Christ, 385, 392 sq. ; 
on Christ’s Divinity, 414, 417, 
418; questionable language of, 
418 sq. 

Original sin, i. 23. 

Orthodoxy, vi. 336, 337. 


Ῥ. 
Paganism, its hostility to Chris- 


Nn 


tianity, 111, 139 sq.; St. Paul’s 
judgment of, vi. 308; its notice 
of the worship of Christ, vii. 391 
sq.; its moral corruption, i, 2; 
lil, 140; viii. 488 sq. 

Pantheism, i. 26 sq.; viii. 448 sq. 

Papias, v. 215. 

‘ Parables ofthe Kingdom, iii. 1038q. 

Paraclete, the Montanists’, v. 217, 
note. . 

Passion, vast significance of the, 
vill. 473 8q:; its virtue de- 
pendent on Christ’s Divinity, vi. 
298 ; viii. 476 sq. 

Pastoral Epistles, the, νἱ. 326, 337. 

Patripassianism, i. 15, 16. 

Paul, St., has been called the creator 
of Christianity, i. 14; his conver- 
sion, iii. 138; his interview with 
the leading apostles, vi. 278; 
characteristics of his style, 281; 
his teaching on Christ’s Manhood, 
303 sq.; on the Divine Unity, 
307 586. ; on Divinity of Christ, 
explicitly, 311 sq.; and implicitly, 
323 8q.; his account of faith, 
282, 339 sq.; of regeneration, 
344 sq.; his opposition to Ju- 
daizers, 348 sq.; contrast between 
him and St. John, 350 sq. 

Paulus of Samosata, i. 25; vii. 425; 
rejected the worship of Christ, 
vii. 386 ; his cavil at Homoousion, 
430, 431. 

Paulus, rationalist, i. 42. 

Peace, secured by Christ, vi. 333. 

Pearson, Bp., on adoration of Christ, 
Vii. 379, note. 

Pelagianism, viii. 487. ᾿ 

Pentateuch, quoted by Christ, viii. 
454 86. 

Περιχώρησιϑ, i. 33, note. 

Persecution, Pagan, iii. 144. 

‘Person,’ use of the term, i. 32, 33; 
of Christ, One and Divine, v. 
256 sq. 

Personality, idea of, ii. 67, note; of 
God, i. 30; viii. 444 sq. 

Persons in the Godhead, intimated 
in Old Testament, ii. 48 sq. 

Peschito, the, v. 212. 


ea 

Po 

, a 
»᾿Οο. 
rr 


» 


Petavius, ii. 67; vii. 419, 42479΄. A 


Peter Lombard, v. 261, note 3 Vili, 
480, note, LAR Sai 


< 
4 
᾿ 


2} 1. Ψ 
“ἐγ aX i ee 


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ys FS 
Vi. 
eo 


546 


INDEX. 


Peter, St., his confession, i. 10, 11 3 
Christology of his sermons, vi. 
291 sq.; of his Epistles, 294 sq. 

Pharisaism, iv. 162. © 

Philanthropy, Christian, iii. 130; 
Vill. 494.8q.; spirit of, in St. John, 
V. 241, 242. 

Philip the Apostle, St., his question 
to Christ, iv. 177, 178. 

Philip the Deacon, St., on Isaiah’s 
prophecy, vi. 292. 

Philippians, Epistle to, vi. 335. 

Philo, his theory of the Logos con- 
trasted with St. John’s doctrine, 
ii. 62 sq. ; v. 229, note ; his indif- 
ference to Messianic hopes, ii. 
69, 91 ; on Law of Moses, iii. 137. 

Philosophy, Christianity not a mere, 
iii. 127; Gentile, how far a pre- 
paration for Christianity, ii. 70 ; 
moral weakness of, iii. 144, note ; 
viii. 488 ; language of, how used 
by the Church, Vil. 429. 

Pietism, i, 41, 42. 

‘Plan’ of Christ, characteristics of 
the, iii, 115. 

Platonism, ii. 643; vi. 347. 

Pliny, the elder, iii. 139. 

Pliny, the younger, testimony of, to 
worship of Christ, vii. 391. 

Poetry, Greek, a sadness in, ii. 76. 

Polycarp, St., testimony of, to St. 
John, v. 214; on Divine dignity 
of, and worship of, Christ, vii. 
380, 412. 

Polytheism, ii. 48 ; iii. 133. 

Position taken in the Lectures, i. 
34. 

Positivism, iii. 135, note; viii. 445. 

Practical knowledge of Christ, vi. 
299 ; Vili. 464. 


Praxeas, Monarchianism of, i. 15, 


16; vii. 


449. 
Prayer offered by Christ, as man,’ 


i. 22; to Christ, see ‘ Adoration.’ 
Pre-existence of Christ, iv. 186 sq. 
Presence of God, in souls, i. 31; 

iv. 186. 

Pressensé, Note A, p. §07;0n Christ’s 
‘ plan,’ ili. 113, 115, note; on St. 
John’s Gospel, v. 218, note. 

Priesthood of Christ, vi. 338 ; viii. 

435. 
Priestley, vill. 473. 


Priestly blessing, the, in the Law, 
ii. 50. 

Prophecy, Messianic, three stages 
of, 11. 78 sq.; St. Peter’s use of, 
Vi. 294, 295. 

Prophet, Christ the great, ii. 79. 

Prophets, the, ii. 74, 77, 79, 90, 92 ; 
Vi. 292; their sense of personal 
sinfulness, iv. 164. 

Protevangelium, the, il. “8, 

Proverbs, ‘ Wisdom’ in the, ii. 59, 60. 

Providence, Divine, iv. 180, 181 ; 

vill. 446. 

Prudentius, hymns of, vii. 408, 409, 
notes. 

Psalms, the Messianic, ii. 80 sq. 

Purity, Christian grace of, viii. 489, 


490. | 

Posey, Dr., on Book of Enoch, i. 7, 
note; on Messianic prophecies, 
ii. 80, 81, 87 sq., notes; on Ter- 
tullian, v. 211, note. 


R. 


Rabbi, title of, iii. 109. 

Rabbinical schools, ii. 75; their 
Messianic doctrine, 00 ; their later 
invention of ‘a double Messiah, 
86. 

Racovian Catechism, vil. 404, 405. 

Rationalism, the older, i. 12, 143 
Note A, p. 503; modern, iii. 
122, 123. 

Recapitulation of the argument, 
Vill. 497. 

See vi. 298, 311, 3373 Vill. 
477, 478. 

Regeneration, St. Paul’s doctrine 
of, vi. 344 56. ; Vill. 490. 

Reign of Christ, i. 36; ii. ms a iii. 
125. 

Religion, definitions of, i. 3, 43 
object a Person, 36. See ‘ bow 


ma.’ 
Renan, Note A; his view of Christ, 
i. 15; on Hillel, iil. 107; on Ga- 
lilean influences, 108 ; his expla- 
nation of Christ’s success, 136 sq ; 
how he differs from Strauss, 146, 
1473; on the Gospel miracles, iv. 
161, 202, note; denies Christ’s Re- 
surrection, I 54; ; criticises Chan- 
ning, 158, note; denies that 
Christ claimed to be God, 178, 


INDEX. 


547 


198, note; on His Self-assertion, 
196, 202, notes ; on His ‘sincerity,’ 
201; on St. John’s Gospel, v. 220, 
note, 271; his use of the word 
‘God,’ viii. 451, note. 

Resurrection of Christ, the, Christi- 
anity based on truth of, iv. 154 
84. ; preached by SS. Peter and 
Paul, vi. 293, 324, 325. 

Reuss, on prologue of St. John, v 
228, 231, 236, 237, notes; on 6 
ὧν... «. αἰῶνας, Vi. 313; on re- 
generation, 345, note. 

Revelation, the Christian, i. 2; vii. 
4353 belief i in, necessitates a : the- 
ology, Viil. 441. 

Reverence, necessarily truthful, v. 
268; Lecky’s use of the word, 
vii. 360, note. 

‘Rhetoric,’ charge of, against the 
Fathers, vii. 413. 

Richter, J. P., on Christ, iii. 149. 

Ritual, Jewish, impressed a sense 
of sin, ii. 77. 

Romans, Epistle to, vi. 281, 329. 

Rousseau, on the Gospel history, 
iii. 133; V. 271; on ae ὁ propa- 
gation of ianity, iii. 149, 
note; on possibility of miracles, 
iv. 155. 

Ruinart, his ‘Acta Sincera,’ vii. 
399 8q-, notes. 


8. 


Sabbath, Christ’s claim to work on, 
iv. 179 54. 

Sabellianism, i, 15, 33, note; iv. 

184; Vv. 234; Vi 314, note; vii. 
422, 425. 

nts, iii. 128; v. 223; vi. 

301, 342, 345, 349, 3525 Vili. 


479 54., 490, 497. 
Sacrifice of Christ, viii. 477, 478, 


2: 

ee on Christ’s claim to for- 
give sins, iv. 175, note; to work 
on Sabbath, 180, note; on His 
testimony before the High Priest, 
190, 191. 

Sanhedrin, the, iv. 190, 19gr. 

Saviour, Christ the Divine, iii. 150; 
V. 249; Vill. 500. 

Scepticism, in middle ages, iii. 123. 


Schelling, his definition of religion, 
i. 3; his view of Christ, 13; on 
Indian ‘ incarnations,’ 28. 

Schenkel, Note A; his view of 
Christ, i. 15; on Hillel, iii. 108 ; 
his theory of a growth in Christ’s 
claims, 115; rejects the Gospel 
miracles, iv. 153, 154; denies 
possibility of Hypostatic Union, 


v. 256. 

Schleiermacher, theological position 
of, i. 16; v. 209; vi. 318, note; 
his definition of religion, i. 4; 
allows Christ’s originality, iii. 108; 
accepts St. John’s Gospel, v. 209. 

Scotists, the, ii. 56. 

Scripture, Holy, its sense often se- 
cured by non-scriptural terms, i. 
42; its organic unity, ii. 44 54. 

Scrivener, on Codex A, vi. 312, 
note. 

Self-assertion of Christ, i. 5; 
126; iv. 163 8q.; ν. 255. 

Semi-Arians, Vii. 435, 436. 

Seraphim, the, in Isaiah, ii. 51. 

Sermon on the Mount, the, i. 31; 
iii. we ΙΟΙ ; iv. 162, 167; vi. 
290, τι 

Sermons, “the Apostolical, ii. 80; 
vi. 291 8q., 324 8q. 

Servetus, vil. 404, note. 

‘ Shekinah,’ the, v. 235, note. 

‘ Shiloh, ii. 78. 

Simeon, ii. 92; song of, v. 249. 

Sin, sense of, ii. 69, 76; iv. 164; 
Note A, p. 509. 

Sinlessness of Christ, i. 23 ; iv. 165; 
v. 263 ; Vi 305. 

Smith, Dr. Payne, on Isaiah, ii. 
81, note. 

Society, Christ the Founder of a 
spiritual, ili. 99 sq., 1315 vi. 333- 

Socini i. 15, 26, 30, 40; iv. 
154, 158, note, 181, 189, note ; 
V. 237, note; vii. 404; Vili. 471, 
480. 

Socinus, i. 15; iv. 188, note; vi. 
313, note ; vii. 404, 405. 

Solomon, ii. 8ι. 

‘Son oF Gop,’ meaning of the 
title, i. 10; ii. 80; iv. 190, 191; 
ν. 233 84, 246, 247, 250. 

‘Son oF May,’ i, 6 8q-; iv. 173, 
191. 


ΝῺ 2 


548 


INDEX, 


‘Sons of God,’ i. 10, note. 

Soul, the human, v. 260; nobility 
of the, vii. 355; in Christ, i. 21, 
253 Vv. 235, note, 261, 262 ; Vi. 
298, note. 

Spener, i. 42. 

Spheres of Christ’s existence, two, 
v. 258, note ; viii. 463, 464. 

Spinosa, viii. 450. 

SPIRIT, THE HOLY, office of, iii, 128, 
132; V. 270 Βα. ; Vi- 295. 

‘ Sprout’ of David, Christ the, ii. 84; 
vi. 289. 

Stephen, St., his speech, vi. 292 ; his 
dying prayer to Christ, vii. 368, 
369. 

Stier on ‘ self-restraint’ in Christ’s 
teaching, iv. 187, note. 

Stoicism, iii. 117, note, 144; , Viil. 
401. 

Seretiog Note A; his view of Christ, 
i. 13; iii. 146; on texts implying 
Christ’s pre-existence, iv. 189 ; on 
Fourth Gospel, v. 209. 

‘ Subordination’ of the Son, iv. 199; 
vi. 306, note, 323; vii. 422 sq., 
438, note. 

‘ Subsistences’ in the one Godhead, 


ae 

Suffering, a note of the Messiah, ii. 
85, 86; ignored by Jews, gI. 

‘ Supernatural,’ the, in life of Christ, 
1.12 ; iv. 152. 

Sympathy of Christ, i. 25. 

Synoptist Gospels, doctrinal agree- 
ment of with St. John’s, v. 244 sq. 


i 
Tacitus, iii. 139, 140; vii. 397 ; viii. 
88 


488. 

Targums, ii. 78, 80. 

Tatian, v. 213; vii. 418, 426. 

‘Te Deum,’ the, vii. 388. 

Teacher, ideal of a, iv. 168, 169; 
Christ the Infallible, viii. 453 sq., 


500. 
Temptation, the, of Christ; its 
bearing upon the doctrine of His 
Person, Note C; its real limits, 
ib. 
‘ Tersanctus,’ the, vii. 386. 
Tertullian, date of, v. 211, note ; on 
Christ’s true Manhood, i, 25, 26 ;: 


on martyrdoms, iii. 144,145; on 
the four Gospels, v. 211; against 
Tacitus, vii. 397; on Christ’s 
Divinity, 415% questionable lan- 
guage of, 419, 421. 

Θεανδρικὴ ᾿Ενέργεια, v. 263. 

Theism, i. 15; vi. 331; viii. 444 sq. 

Theodoret, viii. 467. 

Theodotus of Byzantium, i. 16 ; vii. 
424. 

Theology, necessary to religion, i. 
3 8q.; Vill. 441. 

‘Theophanies,’ the, in Old Testa- 
ment, li. 51 sq. 

Theophilus on St. John’s Gospel, v. 
203; questionable language of, 

- Vil, 409. 

Theosophy, Alexandrian, ii. 70; Ju- 
daizing, vi. 332. 

‘ Theotokos,’ the, v. 257, 258, note. 

Thessalonians, Epistles to, vi. 328. 

Thomas, Apostle, St., his confession, 
vii. 366. 

Thomas Aquinas, St., on the Incar-: 
nation, v. 259, 261, notes ; against 
Immaculate Conception, vii. 434, 
note. ᾿ 

Thomas ἃ Kempis, teaching of, v. 
186, note. 

Tischendorf, on St. John’s Gospel, 
v. 214, 218, notes. 

Transfiguration, the, v. 253 ; vi. 300. 

Trench, Abp., on Christ’s ‘ works,’ 
Vv. 235, note. 

Trinitarianism, i. 34, note ; ii. 50. 

TRINITY, immanence of the, i. 16; 
early intimations of the, il. 50, 51; 
referred to by St. Paul, vi. 335. 

Truth, Christ the, iii. 126, 142. 

Tiibingen School, the, v. 210, 215; 
vi. 278; Note A, p. 503. 

Turrecremata, Cardinal, vii. 432, 
note; account of his work on 
the Conception of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, Note G. 


wv: 


Ullmann, on Christ’s sinlessness, iv. 
165; on Thomas & Kempis, 186, 
note. : 

Unbelief, modern, strength and 
weakness of, ili, 123, 1243 Vill. 


498. 


INDEX. 


549 


Union of Christ with His people, 
iii. 127; iv. 185, 1863 vi. 334, 
347, 348. 

Unity of Christ’s Person, see ‘ Hy- 
postatic Union’ ; of the Godhead, 
see ‘ Monotheism’; of the Father 
and the Son, essential, iv. 182 sq. ; 
on the ‘ moral’ unity, see Note D ; 
of Scripture, ii. 44 sq. ; of Christ’ 8 
members, vi. 333, 3343 of Christ- 
endom, 111, 122; viii. 

Universality of Christ’s work, vi. 


349. 


V. 


Valentinians, v. 216; vii. 356, 430. 

Virginal birth of Christ, i. 15, 23; 
ii. 88, note. 

Virtues flowing from Christ’s Hu- 
manity, i. 25 ; vi. 348; viii. 481. 


Ww. 


. Waterland, i. 18, 42, note. 
Westcott, on St. John’s Gospel, v. 
212 8q., 224, notes. 


Wetstein, v. 313, note. 

Will of God, the, i. 30. 

Wills in Christ, two, v. 261 sq. 

Wilson, W., on the trial of Christ, 
iv. ΤΟΙ, note. 

‘Wisdom,’ in Old Testament, ii. 59 


sq. 

Wisdom, Book of, ii. 62 ; 

‘Word,’ see ‘ Logos.’ 

‘Works,’ Christ’s miracles so called, 
iv. 156; v.-235, note. 

‘ World,’ the, in St. John, v. 238. 

Worship, see ‘ Adoration.’ 


Vi. 322. 


Ὗς 


Young, on Christ’s ‘character, "ἦν. 
102; note. 


Z. 


Zacharias, song of, v. 248. 


Zealots, the, iii. 137. 

Zechariah, Messianic language of, 
ii. 84, 85, 89. 

Zephyrinus, vii, 425. 

Zwinglianism, viii. 480 sq. 


TEXTS SPECIALLY REFERRED TO. 


GENESIS. 
ἴ, 1 eeeeeses ee ii. 


i τω: 
ili. 15 
111. 22 L 
Wis @ ob sees be we ke AO 
Bh. γον ον ges 05>. ἊΝ 


ee ee ee cf 11. 
Φφὸόο οὐ 96 9... 11. 


ee ee ef of ll. 


XVi, 10-13 ++ +s li. 52 
XVili. I, 2-0 ee oe li. 52 
X1x. 24 . » li. 52 
xxii. 11, 16, 18.0 Ἢ. 53 
XXVIli, 13 2. e+ il. 53 


BEX, BS ny wo ee Ἢ 
Xkxii. 24,30 «. i. 
xlviii. 1» a et 
xlix. το. ii 


EXoDUvs. 
iii. 2, 4 ie . li. 53 
iv. 22. seve ἢ 
xxiii. 21. cere Fe 
Xxxiii, 2, 3 esse 1. 


NUMBERS. 
Vi. 23 .....-.. il 
XXiv. 17 ...... 1], 
. DEUTERONOMY. 
Vi. 4: ee οὐ e868 il. 
XVii. “ee . 1. 
XVili. 15, 18, 10.. 
vi. 201 
JOSHUA. 
i fe © εὐ ree res | 


JUDGES. 
il. I-5 es ©8 @2 of ii. 
vi. 11-22 il 
xiii. 6-22 eoeeee li. 
2 SAMUEL. 


ΜΗ Υχ BPN eee ἃ, 
Vii. 16 eeeeesee il. ἢ 


XXVlil. 12 .... 


se Ake BO 
PSALMS. 


ΠΣ ΤῸΝ ee0ee δὺ δου ii 
ΧΗ 83. ἐς: 
PROVERBS. 

viii. 22-31 . li. 60 


ISAIAH, 


liii. 3 sq. 


JEREMIAH. 
ΧΑΊΤΗ, δι Osco 


ii. 88 


DANIEL, 
i. Shs. 
Vii. 13 oe co cre cee 
ΣΥΝ Venues ner 


Hoska. 

xi. I se al 
Haaeat. 
τ, δ᾽ τιον ὃν 

ZECHARIAH. 


1X. 0, 40... one ες 
ΧΙ, 7 eeee ee ee 


ii. 89 


ii. 85 
ii. 89 
MALACHI. 


li. 89 


WISDOM. 
Vil, 24, 27, 20... il, 62 


ECCcLESIASTICUS. 
xxiv. 8-12, 23 ii. 61, 62 


St. MATTHEW. 


BUD join edice NEO 
1 δέ, νων hele ue ee 
IV. TO νον ο 0a VE BOP 
ἦν, τῇ ce ve ssee IV, 202 
V-Vii, .... lil, 100 8q. 
Ve BTSs 55455 iv. 167 
Vi 48 np cceee Ave 
Vit. 29.. 06 se s+ IVs 160 
Vill. 2 06 sees Vil. 364 
νῊ RO os av he's oF i. 8 
ix, 18 0s Ss τον»; 364 


Xs 40. veseeees lii. 
xi. 27, 28..V. 251, 
χὶ, δι νον τανε 
xii. 39, jo aioe 2 
xiii. 3 sq. . iii, 103, 
XIV. 33.0000 Vik S08 
KV.\25 «00s. ὙΠ 308 
Xvi. 13 ae Pi | 
EVE δ ρυννον 
ΧΥ F405 09 

EVE SE weaves 
ΧΙ, Q «0006 ii, 


EX. 20 ......... Vil. 364 
ui. 37 V. 250 
ERA 42. wena vi. 292 
Ἀ5Π δ᾽, ἐτῶν Ws BEA 
XIV) 30, δυο ἘΓ ioe 
XXiv. 35. . li. 116 
XXvi. age i, ἐνὶ iv. 190 


XXViil. 9, 17.. Vil. 365, 
366 
XXVlil. 19, 20.. 111, 117 
St. Mark. 
1 8’ ΣΣ ein’ νὰν oe ὮΝ 


Vill. 34,35 .. iv. 157 


Texts specially referred to. 


551 


πᾶς £99 ΟΣ: 
vii. 367 
Xill. 32 .. viii. 458 sq. 


St. LUKE. 


HW. 52 cave ce” Vill, 456 
Wate wane: νον Ue SOR 
a vii. 365 
ix. 59-62 iv. 176 
Ν,. ἀλλ... on, Ωρ ΒΙ 
ΧΙ, 51-53 .... iv. 176 
BiG: 26. << oe 35 iv. 176 
XIV. 28 .esee0 ive 193 
ἈΝ, RAs cle 60:0, 010 ἘΔ 
St. JOHN. 
1. I. sq . V. 227 8q. 
OA eres i, 19 
WEG yc en ριον. Ve DRA 
1. 20... .....0. Vi. 298 
By 28 | 0. Ville 406 
iii. 13 οὐ ον γι 180 
ΧΟ 108: 6 se σαν VA. 367 
Vv. 17-19.. iv. 180, 181 


V. 22, 23 .. iv. 1823 v. 
236; vii. 367 
MET γα ἐφ φως canst 


Ve 39 .. “56 “ον. il. 96 
vi. 26-59 iv. 157 
4, δὰ... .. iv. 189 
Vil. 15 «2.0 iii, 109 
Vill. 23 ...... IV. 171 
Wis AS τς, iv. 171 
21 es See i. 23 
Vili. 52-58 . iv. 186, 187 
ες eS a ὅδ vii. 366 
X. 15 .. 2+ oe -. Vili, 466 
X. 29 eee IV. 177 
X. 30 86. .. ....iv. 183 
Xi. 25 ec ee IV. 171 
Bie AB ov ka ve iv. 171 
WA ch can V. 257 
ΧΙ. 34 . . iii, 142 
xXiv.6 .. iii, 126, 142 
ἀν, 9,10 .... iv. 178 
Xiv.14,15..iv.171,172 
Xiv. 23 «IV, 198 
xiv. 26.. Vv. 271 
xiv. 28 .. lv. 199 
XV. 23. iv. 172 
Mle BAR το νων, v. 271 
XVI. 23 ..+... Vii. 367 


iv. 189 
. 237 
237 
- 104 
. 190 
li. 366 
225 


XVii. 3 
ΧΥ Se cece 
XVI. 37 22+ οὐ 
pak AR. Mere Peet 
5 cay: Pai 
ἘΣ ΕΣ ἐλευ Ἦν 


SEL FF ss os ἘΠῚ 466 
Acts 
i, 16-20...... Vi. 291 
ig ae vii. 368 
ii. 24-36 Vi. 291 
ἘΠῚ 15 .. os Vag Ue 
Wis ES wage ots Wi Ge 
IV. IL... eee es Vi. 291 
Vil. 37, 51-5 3...Vi. 292 
Vib. Καὶ dona es vii. 368 
Vill. 32, 35 «+ «+ Vi. 292 
τ δ μον ὙΠ Δ... 
ee 7 oe ee vii. 367 
X. 25, 26 . vii. 376 
xiv. 14, 15.... Vii. 377 


XV. 14-20.... 
EVE. 1S) seus 
$8 6 τω ες 9} 
os Fe ere res, 
BX το νον 00 ΨΗ, 
χα 17, 18. Vi. 


RoMANS. 


ὅς oe Vi. 312 δα. 
X. Q SQ. oo -. oe. Vil, 372 


1 CORINTHIANS. 


τ λῆἔ ἐν το | a Fe 
BR valores on: eee Mla SD 
Ba Ge wee Meine. Wie Sat 
Ble: BE: νὸν οι Wig 520 
Vill τον ἐν ceed. ΖΘ, 
Vit δον νόου Thy 406 
Xl. 20 .- δα soe Vie 330 
ἘΠῚ ἃ veles' ον ἐν Wh BOA 
EV. Q ae. secs nei Vi. 280 
xv. 14, 18 iv. 155 
Ἐν δέ τος 026 Vi. 306 
+3, Dig 1 eae nee lil. 127 


ΧΥ 41 00,63. VL JO, 302 
XVi.22.. iil. 126; vi. 331 


2 CORINTHIANS, 
iv. διὶ, eeeeees 


PHILIPPIANS. 
il. 6 56. e*eee οὐ lil. 
il. TQ ..... eeee Vil. : 
ili. 2 I eeeeeene#ees Vi. 
iv. I 3 e*eesee8es lil. 


COLOSSIANS. 
i. I 5-I 7 ee ee ee Vi. 
= 17 eeeeeeees Vi. 
li. 9 eee#tees ee Vi. 
il. 18 eeeeee*e#es Vii. 


1 THESSALONIANS., 
11. IT @eee οὐ ὁ. Vil. 371 


2 THESSALONIANS. 


a Ree μα » Vil 373 
1 TIMOTHY. 
Lo NG: ον Vir 4.7. 
BG τ ριον τὸν tie ane 
Wie 1065 οὐ αν ee ae 
Vis 185 τ 65s Vi 300 
TITUS. 

Me. PS τως ance ΠῚ 4Ὲ8 
Hil. “οὐ χοὰς ὡς Vis 328 
HEBREWS. 
ee ee + Vi. 322 
Le Ons th ween Vie Te 
HE & Oceans vi. 321 
Wis. Faw cba Ve S86 
XU. ZZ 6s ss se We. 377 


Texts specially referred to. 


552 

: Mis BPA koko vi. 299 | V. 13 8g. «-.. vii. 374 

St. JAMES. iv. II oe Vi. 299 | V. 20 «2 00-s0e Ve 239 
HDS OAs os su Eh BES | 
i, 23, 27 vi. 286 2 St. PErer. 2 St. JOHN. 
wherein: cup. Saami Fs 9 ace ne i, 23 
Hed .deceeges W290) wy vi. 300 | 10 II ........ V. 241 
ii. 8 Vi 288 as ee ee e8 ef ee 3 
ii. 14 sq. Vi. 250 111. 3 ee e8 08 δον Vi. 2 Ο St. JuDnR.. 

1 Sr. Perer. 1 St. JoHN. i eee 
APR. sis << ον τς Me 900i] ἄξιο oy se vn v. 238 REVELATION. 
SPER τς ξεν Υ̓ ΘΕ. TE TO ose en ssi V. 239 | 1. 5,6 ...... vii. 376 
1.12 os «6... Vi. 206 | ii. 22 .2...... Vi. 279 | 1.8 20.0.0... Ve 243 
i. 18, 19 .- «. .. Vi. 298 ii. 23 soos. Vill. 448 11. 17. .. «νοῦν Vil. 363 
li. Q seeeeeee Vie 295 | li 5 «+ ++--0-e- 1. 23 | v.6sq. .. vii. 374 sq. 
ll. 23 «ὁ cecece Vie 207 | IV. 2,3 ++ eee Ve 239] xix. 16 » V. 243 
li, 24 ...6 τὸ ον Vi. 297 | IV. 15.....6 2696. , 238 [Χχ. 6 ........ Vi 244 
ul. Gite we ee vi. 297 Vv. 4) 5 .......69 v. 239 XXii. 9 e®ee6 oe Vii. 377 

OXFORD: 


BY T, COOMBE, M.A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A., 


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